Amid all the score-settling and hints of non-binary sexuality, something genuinely eye-opening has emerged from Nicola Sturgeon’s new autobiography, Frankly. After a lifetime dedicated to the cause of Scottish independence, the former SNP first minister appears to have given up on it.

“I predict that in 20 years, perhaps sooner, the UK in its current form will no longer exist,” she writes in her memoir, which reaches shops this week. “What will emerge in its place will be stronger, healthier and more democratic. An independent Scotland, a more autonomous Wales and a reunified Ireland will join England, enjoying the benefits of the home rule it will gain as a result, in a new British Isles confederation of nations.”

Home rule? Join England? A new British Isles? It’s enough to have any serious Scottish nationalist reaching for their claymore. The SNP has always envisaged Scotland becoming a fully self-governing state, and running it like a Scandinavian country. But confederation implies a new union with the Auld Enemy, similar to the 1707 Union that nationalists have always condemned as servitude.

True, Sturgeon still says she supports “independence”. But imagining Scotland as part of a new confederal Britain is such a weak version of this that she has robbed the term of any real meaning.

It has always been de rigueur for SNP leaders to promise that Scotland will be free from London’s domination within their lifetime. What Sturgeon seems to be talking about here is the timorous halfway house that used to be called “devo-max”, which she rejected so vehemently in the 2014 referendum campaign.

By flirting with federalism, she is allying herself, perhaps unconsciously, with her great enemy: Gordon Brown. The former Labour PM has been pressing for a new federal UK for years, most recently in his “Renewing Our Democracy” report in 2022. That envisaged a new federal constitution and a senate elected by the UK regions to replace the House of Lords.

Maybe there’s a subtle difference between a full-fat federation and a looser confederation. But it’s not much, and neither constitutes “independence”. An independent country would not share sovereignty, especially with an England which nationalists believe has been holding Scotland in a state of colonial subordination for centuries. Nor does an independent country allow another country to dictate its foreign policy or control its economy. But all of these would come with a confederation.

This would mean Scotland having to accept nuclear weapons on the Clyde, which Sturgeon, a unilateralist, always said was one of the most important reasons why Scotland needed to be fully independent. Unless the rest of the confederation went with it, Scotland would also lose the right to rejoin the European Union, another of the key reasons many SNP voters support independence.

Scotland would surely also have to be represented in the new UK federal parliament. Otherwise, Scots would have no say in decisions affecting its economy and its relations with other countries. Scottish MPs would have to troop down to the new UK federal parliament, which would inevitably be located in London because England has the largest population and thus will always be the dominant partner.

It’s difficult to explain exactly how this new, confederal UK would differ from what exists right now, Ireland aside. Scotland already has a parliament in Edinburgh with extensive powers over domestic affairs, including health, education and justice. It has been acquiring a range of economic powers, too, over taxation and even borrowing.

So, has Scotland’s leading living nationalist given up the ghost? She even says she may move to London — which she “loves” — because she “can’t breathe in Scotland”. These are sentiments to horrify any pure-blooded Scot.

Would Sturgeon’s younger self, who grew up a passionate nationalist in small-town Irvine, recognise this London mediarati aspirant? Sturgeon, in nationalist slang, may not be a “Yoon” quite yet, but she’s definitely been on a journey.

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Iain Macwhirter was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022, and is the author of Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum But Lost Scotland. He was Rector of the University of Edinburgh from 2009-12.

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