Sir,
Ursula Craig just ‘doesn’t understand’ why the Scottish Government has a mandate to trigger a second independence referendum. Allow me to clear the matter up for her.
The First Minister’s mandate derives from the SNP landslide victory nearly two years ago – with a higher margin of electoral success than accorded to Thatcher and Blair at their peak – that included a specific black-and-white manifesto commitment to a national plebiscite if Scotland was threatened with being dragged out of the EU ‘against our will’.