15:10

Nicola Sturgeon has increased the risk of confusing Scottish voters, and her own activists, over her competing strategies in backing a second Brexit referendum and a fresh independence vote.

She implied on Sky yesterday she was close to calling for a second independence referendum, because she has a mandate to stage one since the SNP won the most seats in the 2016 Holyrood and 2017 UK elections, and did so on a promise of holding a fresh independence vote if there was a material change in circumstances (in other words, Brexit).

Interviewed by Adam Boulton, she said she needed to wait until the current Brexit chaos was over before setting out her plans:

And when we get to the end of this current phase of negotiations, which I hope is very soon, then I will set out how I intend to exercise that mandate.

Note the use of the word “how”. She did not say “whether” or “if” she wants to use the mandate. The SNP wanted that message heard: it tweeted out that interview to its 220,000 followers. But there’s a significant timing problem here, which senior figures in her party are well aware of.

She can only exercise that existing mandate before May 2021 – the date of the next Holyrood elections. (The SNP say their primary mandate derives from the Scottish parliament.) And time for that is rapidly running out: the optimum time for a referendum would allow a year to elapse before another election. To hold one by May 2020 means she would need to win Westminster’s approval (highly unlikely to be granted), pass referendum legislation and allow six months for the campaign, in little more than a year.

Yet on Thursday she said she actually wanted to see article 50 extended and then a second EU referendum, telling first minister’s questions: “Let’s get no deal properly off the table; let’s seek a lengthy extension to allow this issue to go back to the people.”

That appeals to a large number of independence-sceptic moderate and centre-left Scottish voters: many more back EU membership than independence. But resolving these questions could take months; her spokesman acknowledged that after first minister’s questions. So their stance on when she would update Holyrood on her independence plans is subtly changing. She was due to do so by 29 March. It will now come “in due course” and “in the near future”, her spokesman said.

Sturgeon is facing a rapidly looming challenge: independence or Europe. She must either disappoint her restless troops or the larger number of voters who want Scotland, and the UK, to remain in the EU (something she wants too). Her senior colleagues know this. And there is a final conundrum: if she succeeds in helping to kill Brexit entirely over the next few months, through attrition or a second EU referendum, then her only rationale for staging a second independence referendum now would die too. Why? Because then that “material change” in Scotland’s circumstances, her mandate, disappears.