SETTLE ON SUNDAY: The UK Government is a disaster zone ... so why hasn't support for independence surged ahead?

Then again, perhaps this heavily pregnant pause should not come as such a surprise given the PM has made crystal clear her distaste for the “attention-seeking” FM, who, she believes, should best be ignored.

True to her word, Truss is ignoring Sturgeon and sharing, no doubt, Boris Johnson’s belief that Scottish devolution under a 15-year SNP administration has been a “disaster” in which Sturgeon and her colleagues have brazenly sought to use power in Edinburgh to undermine the Union and further their goal towards the break-up of the PM’s “precious Union”.

Interestingly, since entering Downing St, Truss has lightened her tone towards Sturgeon, saying she is “very keen” to work with her to help “turbocharge” Scotland’s economy.

The only problem is the three areas the PM mentioned - using more of the North Sea’s oil and gas, building more nuclear power stations and reducing taxes, including for the better off – don’t quite float the Sturgeon boat.

As the SNP conference gets underway in Aberdeen, where senior figures will tear into Tory “dysfunction” and “chaos,” the FM herself branded the PM’s non-appearance on her doorstep “absurd,” saying she didn’t know whether it was “arrogance, lack of respect, or insecurity, or whatever”.

Sturgeon stressed she would do her best to fizz with Liz but then sniped “or whoever comes after” her, having slipped in how the PM’s debut had been “utterly catastrophic”.

It may be Truss is confidently waiting on the outcome of the UK Supreme Court’s hearing, on whether or not Holyrood has the power to hold Indyref2, before she meets Sturgeon formally. The two-day court session is set to begin on Tuesday.

The PM shares the view of most pundits that it won’t take the law lords long to throw out the Scottish Government’s application.

The FM has suggested the constitutional position is unclear and a move to get a definitive ruling is now necessary given how most Scots vote for Nationalist politicians.

Yet, who other than Sturgeon and her SNP Praetorian Guard believes the constitutional position is unclear? The 1998 Scotland Act is crystal clear. It says a law passed by MSPs is beyond their competence if it “relates to reserved matters,” which include those concerning the constitution, most notably, “the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England”.

This time last year, the SNP administration lost a battle at the Supreme Court, which ruled some provisions in two Holyrood Bills were outwith the Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence; that is, they were fundamentally at odds with the Scotland Act as they could impinge on Westminster’s sovereignty by limiting its ability to make laws for Scotland in all areas, including devolved ones.

So, the country’s top judges were making clear MPs could not be constrained, underlining the limits of devolved power, which, of course, antagonises the SNP leadership.

And yet back in the late 1990s the Nationalists enthusiastically supported the legislation, which created the devolved settlement, knowing full well its limitations.

For the past eight years following the 2014 referendum, Sturgeon & Co have also known full well that UK Governments of either stripe will not countenance another independence poll any time soon, taking the FM at her word that the poll was a “once-in- a-generation” event.

What continues to surprise is that despite the upheaval of the 2008 financial crash, the Tory-inspired austerity thereafter, the Brexit result and the ensuing parliamentary psychodrama, the debacle of partygate and Boris Johnson’s dishonest premiership, the energy crisis and the Conservatives’ economic mismanagement under Truss’s disastrous Downing St debut, there is still no clear majority among the Scottish public for independence.

Regularly, the Nationalists seize on any poll that shows the Yes vote has edged ahead of the No vote but then adopt a Trappist silence when it’s the other way round. Naturally.

Given all the turmoil of recent years played out in such dramatic style at Westminster, one would have thought the desire for Scottish independence would be raging ahead. But it isn’t.

Indeed, one snapshot recently suggested only 35% of Scottish voters wanted another referendum on independence this time next year with 53% opposed.

This lack of public support sits along a quiet bubbling of discontent among senior Nationalists, who privately think Sturgeon’s threat to turn the 2024 General Election into a “de facto” referendum, should the Supreme Court find against the Scottish Government, is misguided and a gamble too far.

One SNP minister recently told The Times: “People can see right through it. People know when they feel it, not just when they hear it, and people aren’t feeling it.”

And it emerged yesterday that even Angus Robertson, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for External Affairs, seemed less than convinced Indyref2 would happen on Sturgeon’s preferred date of October 19 2023 by saying it would come “at some stage…sooner or later”.

By raising the stakes in trying to turn a general election into a single issue referendum, the SNP leader has also raised the prospect that the UKwide poll in two years’ time could well become the nastiest campaign in living memory.

However, if by some unexpected twist the Supreme Court declares the current statute book does give Holyrood the power to hold another referendum, Truss will remain supremely relaxed. She knows the Tory Government would simply introduce a new law through both Houses to reassert beyond doubt Westminster’s supremacy on the constitution.

In such circumstances, an outraged Sturgeon would insist that this was a betrayal of Scottish democracy. By contrast, Truss would say it’s UK democracy at work, ensuring - as the FM gets nearer to calling it a day - Scotland’s constitutional torture would go on. And on. And on.