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Nicola Sturgeon’s dismissal of last year’s Scotland Act as “not worth the paper it’s printed on” can only be regarded as contrived grievance-stoking.

When John Swinney and Linda Fabiani – the SNP’s representatives on the Smith Commission – signed the final report in November 2014, they knew its limitations.

They can argue that they didn’t get everything they wanted – but that’s politics.

They could have refused to sign and walked away. They didn’t.

When the Scotland Act became law in March last year, the 56 nationalist MPs at Westminster could have voted against it, or at least abstained. They didn’t.

The Supreme Court’s ruling that the so-called Sewel Convention is a matter of political agreement rather than legal requirement came as absolutely no surprise.

The Scottish Government and their legal advisers were well aware of this long before the judgment and had, in fact, already admitted Holyrood had no veto on Brexit.

That can only leave the conclusion that they went to court not seeking a clarification on a point of law, but hunting a fresh grievance to bolster their separatist case.

It would be perverse in the current constitutional set-up if a devolved assembly in any part of the country had the ability to overrule Westminster on a matter decided in a UK-wide referendum (imagine the righteous outcry had Scotland voted for independence only to have Westminster try to overrule our democratic choice).

Much as Scottish nationalists wished it were otherwise, Scotland voted to stay part of Britain in 2014.

And that’s where Sturgeon still has a valid justification, backed by democratic mandate, to vent her frustrations – rather than manufacturing grievance like yesterday.

(Image: PA)

Last May, she was elected as First Minister – albeit leader of a minority Government – on the manifesto pledge of bringing forward another independence referendum if there was material change in Scotland’s relationship with Britain.

Brexit, coupled with the fact that Scotland voted to remain, is by any measure material change.

For many Scots – including a sizeable chunk of those who voted No in 2014 – the instinctive reaction to Brexit is independence appearing more philosophically attractive.

Financially, however, independence has never seemed so economically ghastly.

The majority of Scots do not like the reality of Brexit but, having voted to stay in Britain, democracy dictates we abide by the Leave decision, even if it was secured by just a slim margin (it’s worth noting that a good many Leave voters are also Scottish nationalists).

The test Sturgeon now wants to set is this – which of the two markets, the UK or the EU, would Scotland prefer?

As timing would have it, new trade figures to be published today will again confirm that the UK market is substantially more important to our prosperity than the EU.

Sturgeon’s girning about the legal ruling is wholly unjustified but her offer to Scotland of another vote on going it alone is not.

Whether she would be wise to make that offer, given Scotland’s current economic position, is a matter of an altogether different magnitude.