There’s long been a conspiracy of silence at Holyrood. If Vigil’s DI Kirsten Longacre had John Swinney locked in an interview room with a bare light bulb and rubbish coffee, he still wouldn’t sing.

The big issue politicians fret over, exactly when there should be a second independence referendum, has a clear answer which you sense the key players all know but don’t like to say. It’s this: there should only be a vote if and when support for Scottish independence is consistently around 60 per cent.

You can argue about the exact figure, but it’s clear we need to be close to settled-will territory. Support for having a Scottish Parliament was in the mid to late 60s for a long time before there was a referendum in 1997. That delivered an uncontestable result. Support for independence should be around 60 per cent, for an extended period, for two key reasons: because then we would know that people did actually want a vote, making the upheaval and turmoil of a campaign worthwhile; and, secondly, it would be likely to deliver a decisive result.

Unless and until those tests were met, holding a referendum would simply create bitterness and division. For the SNP, a badly timed poll could even be fatal.

The parties all know this, but for their differing reasons, aren’t explicit about it. When Andy Burnham set hares running three weeks ago by seeming to suggest his government would agree to a second referendum if there were majority support for one (before rowing it back), he was giving us a glimpse of Labour’s private thinking. They know that if support for independence reached the high 50s to early 60s over an extended period, blocking........

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