It’s such a pity the word independence has no Rs in it because Stephen Flynn is good at Rs. He takes his time over them. They rattle and rev in his mouth. When he’s talking, he tries to work words like barrier and warrior and corridor into every sentence if he can because it sounds so good. Dare I say it: he exaggerates it a bit to prove his Scottishness? But oh: if only there was an R in independence, things could be so different.

At least there’s an R in European Union though. Mr Flynn raised the subject in the Commons the other day when addressing Sir Keir Starmer (four Rs! even better). The House was debating the King’s Speech and like every King’s speech, there was good (more housing, more devolution for England, offenders forced to attend sentencing hearings) and bad (a gradual ban on smoking – we need fewer bans, not more).

But the main point Mr Flynn wanted to make was that the King’s Speech did not include a commitment to end the two-child benefit cap, and there are plenty on the Labour benches who agree with him (mostly secretly, for now). But we should look at something else Mr Flynn said during his remarks because it’s revealing about how the SNP think. It’s also revealing about the contradiction at the heart of what they say on constitutional and economic affairs.

What Mr Flynn said was this: “Our........

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