Eighteen short months ago, the SNP was confident of what the 2024 General Election would be about. It was to be a “de facto referendum on independence”, insisted Nicola Sturgeon with her faithful deputy, John Swinney, nodding by her side.

There then followed a dispute involving the greatest minds within the SNP about how assumed victory in the “de facto referendum” should be defined: whether on the basis of seats won or votes cast. Everyone else thought the whole idea was bonkers and left them to get on with it.

At least it was a plan, even if an exceptionally incoherent one which has duly disintegrated in line with the opinion polls. I doubt if Nicola Sturgeon Limited, ensconced in a TV studio in the hated imperial capital on election night, will be interpreting the Scottish results as a “referendum on independence”.

But what has taken its place? I now find genuine difficulty in discerning what Mr Swinney is offering any market beyond his hardest core vote as the reason for voting Nationalist on July 4. There was certainly nothing in this week’s BBC debate to provide an answer to that question.

Instead, the new strategy does not seem to extend beyond repeating the words “18 billion pounds” as often as possible. But what do they mean? As far as I can trace, they are drawn from a pre-Budget report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies in March which anticipated, on current projections, a UK-wide spending gap of that sum by 2028-29.

Nobody should know better than Mr Swinney that an awful lot can change in four years and the purpose of........

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