How the European question impacts on Scotland’s future

All this rather horrifies the Conservatives.

Their leader Kemi Badenoch said on Sunday it was “yet another Westminster bubble argument”.

Her Shadow Scottish Secretary Harriet Cross told the Sunday Show: “When we have a vote, that should be respected. That is the point of a democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to make that work and there have been benefits to leaving the EU”.

What is particularly horrifying for the Conservative leadership is the prospect of re-opening the decades of Tory in-fighting on a matter they thought had been put to bed.

Far from horror, the SNP view the prime minister’s European stance with some glee.

Brexit is so woven in with the issue of Scottish independence that it can be hard to unpick the threads.

The SNP’s Westminster leader, Dave Doogan, told me he “really welcomed” Rachel Reeves’ comments, and a majority of Scots had already known that leaving the EU was a “retrograde” step.

He said: “When you are sold a false prospectus, it’s ok to go back to re-visit that after a reasonable period of time and I would say that, whilst that’s appropriate for the European Union referendum, it’s also appropriate for the referendum that happened two years prior to that in 2014 over Scottish independence.”

The leader warned it would be “hypocrisy” not to re-visit the independence issue.