Well nobody saw that coming, at least not yet.

The announcement by Nicola Sturgeon that she is calling for a second referendum on Scottish independence has certainly thrown the SNP cat among the UK’s political pigeons.

Yesterday was meant to be Theresa May’s day when the Commons was due to reject the attempts by the House of Lords to delay (some might say “improve”) the Brexit Bill, thus enabling Mrs May to formally begin the process of negotiating Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

Instead, she was pre-empted by the SNP leader who said that because most Scots had voted to stay in the EU she was making good her threat to again ask the people of Scotland if they wished to leave the UK.

That matter will be settled, one way or another, in the months to come before the UK formally leaves the EU.

But one phrase in the Scottish First Minister’s announcement was particularly striking. She spoke of the necessity of this move because of the “collapse of the Labour Party”.

And she wasn’t speaking about the collapse of Labour in Scotland where it now has just one MP, but its collapse throughout the UK under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

This was a harsh, but not necessarily an incorrect, judgement to make; for the electoral arithmetic, even if Scotland was still in play, suggests that the earliest that Labour could expect to form a government would be 2030, and without Scotland even this date looks optimistic.

And what of those who voted for Brexit? There were warnings that leaving the EU could lead to the break-up the UK. Those warnings weren’t heeded then, maybe they should be now?

  • Ivor Gaber is Professor of Political Journalism at the University of Sussex and a former political journalist based at Westminster