The media is aflame this morning with discussion of the agreement between the UK and EU with particular regard to Ireland, in which the UK essentially concedes just about everything including free movement, the thing most Brexiters voted Leave for.

We’ve largely avoided analysis of the Brexit negotiations here on Wings up until now, because there’s been a raft of people who are far more expert on the subject than us doing it at enormous length, very little of it directly concerned Scotland, and so nobody really needed our tuppence-worth. But this one’s big.

The obvious specific implications of the agreement have already been pointed out.

And Scotland’s Unionists are understandably in a blind, indignant panic:

But beyond all the technicalities and the legalities, what today’s developments show us is a much more fundamental truth: that if an independent Scotland stays in the EU, the UK may huff and puff, but in the end it will completely cave in on everything, because it has no viable alternative.

Brexit shifted almost a third of No voters to Yes, but it’s had almost no impact on overall support for independence because similar numbers of Yes voters moved the other way. But what today proves beyond any rational dispute is that the negotiating clout of the EU trumps that of the UK every time.

Even the most fervent Yes/Leaver in Scotland can now plainly see that it would be immeasurably better for Scotland to become independent while still in the EU, securing vast advantages from the superior negotiating position the 27-nation bloc provides, and only THEN start to contemplate whether it might be a good idea for Scotland to leave the EU at a later date too.

(It would also have the benefit of being able to observe how it goes for the rUK – for once it wouldn’t be Scotland that was used as the guinea-pig. In the unlikely event that Brexit turns out to be a huge success nothing would stop Scotland from following suit, with almost all of the gamble taken out.)

Nobody with an IQ higher than a sack of mud now doubts that the UK is going to get the worst of the deal when it comes to Brexit. Every single position the UK has tried to take into the negotiations (remember “the EU can whistle for its divorce payment!”?), now lies in dust and tatters.

If Scotland becomes independent before Brexit takes effect – and there’s still plenty of time for that – it can quickly secure unbroken EU membership from within and enjoy the same leverage as Ireland has deftly deployed with the EU behind it. There’d be no hard border at Gretna, no economic bullying, no bombing of airports.

Some, doubtless, will remain defiantly stubborn, turning a blind eye to reason. But if even a third of the Yes voters who’ve turned to No because of Brexit take a sensible and pragmatic view of the reality, Yes would have a clear and solid majority.

It’s never been more obvious that if Scotland is ever to become independent, this is the best time there’s ever going to be to do it. Being in the EU is an argument we’d be able to have another day – from a position of strength fully informed by the experience of our next-door neighbour to the south – rather than having a truly terrible settlement imposed on us by a stupendously incompetent Westminster government which cares nothing for Scotland, and which we’ll then have no power to ever do anything about.

(Many people on social media have this week been tweeting an old quote, attributed to various sources, which runs “It is better to be Britain’s enemy than her friend, because she will always try to buy her enemies by selling her friends”. Scotland’s fishermen in particular might want to reflect on that one.)

Negotiating our way out of the UK in the future without the EU behind us would be a thousand times harder and leave us with the worst of all worlds. It’d be like hacking one of your own arms and legs off before going into a fight, when the arm was a super-powered robotic mecha-arm or something.

We respect the views of Scots who want out of the EU. There are many legitimate reasons to dislike it, not least its recent treatment of Catalonia. But to coin a phrase, now is not the time. And to coin another, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Fate has delivered us an incredible and unrepeatable opportunity to stack the odds massively in Scotland’s favour. It’s time that Yes/Leavers grew up, grasped the thistle and took it.