Nicola Sturgeon is still not yet 50, but seems to have been around for ever. Just a teenager when she joined the Scottish National Party (SNP), she has been a member of the Scottish parliament for more than 20 years, married to her party’s chief executive for 10, and been Scotland’s first minister for five. A permanent fixture of the UK’s constitutional landscape — which is ironic, given her sole ambition to leave it — by now she feels as familiar to me as the Queen.

Small countries are often prone to big gossip, but right now Edinburgh is in a fever of scandalous rumours that makes Game of Thrones look like Postman Pat. In large part, this is because Sturgeon’s predecessor, Alex Salmond,