THE Scottish LibDems are feeling pretty pleased with themselves at the moment.

They’ve risen from the ashes, from total anonymity to relative obscurity after securing one MEP in the European elections.

Their emboldened leader Willie Rennie used his moment in the sun to hit out at Nicola Sturgeon, urging her not to interpret the SNP's success in the vote as support for independence.

“She's tried to say that people who voted remain in Scotland in the referendum have somehow indicated support for independence and she's misjudged that,” Rennie said, “she shouldn't misjudge this one as well.”

Thanks to an STV clip that has recently been recycled on social media, Scots have been given a timely reminder of how accurate LibDem advice to Sturgeon has been in the past – and how the current First Minister knew a thing or two about what the EU referendum would mean for Scotland.

On November 27, 2013, then-deputy first minister Sturgeon faced off against LibDem MP and Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael on an episode of Scotland Tonight.

Carmichael described Sturgeon’s concern that staying in the UK could threaten Scotland’s EU membership as “yet another bit of negative scaremongering”.

Sturgeon also pointed out that Carmichael had previously said that he could not guarantee Scotland would stay in the EU.

Fearing that the deputy first minister was too busy pointing out flaws in his logic to take on his advice, Carmichael appealed to host Rona Dougall to intervene to allow him to explain exactly how Scotland could be guaranteed EU membership ahead of a proposed Brexit referendum.

“Come on, you can hold your own, surely,” Sturgeon said. “You don’t have to keep appealing to Rona, come on.”

“I’m sure I can hold my own,” Carmichael replied with characteristic certainty, adding: “But I’m trying to play by the rules and I think you ought to as well.”

Playing by the rules, it would subsequently emerge, was not in fact one of Carmichael’s strengths. Eighteen months later he admitted being behind a leak from the Scotland Office suggesting Sturgeon wanted David Cameron to remain as prime minister.

READ MORE: Nothing to hide? Carmichael admits memo came from Scotland Office ... but says: ‘These things happen’

Getting back to the debate, Carmichael sought to quash fears that Scotland could be dragged out of the EU by pointing out that the UK’s three main political party’s leaders were all Remainers.

Unfortunately, the protectors of the UK's place in Europe did not fare so well. Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg resigned a year before the Brexit vote after disastrous general elections in 2015, while David Cameron was banished to his garden shed after an astonishing act of career suicide.

But Carmichael had insisted: “The only guaranteed way to leave the EU is to leave the United Kingdom.”

It seems Sturgeon, however, did not get the message. She said: “There is going to be an in/out referendum. We could find ourselves in the position where the UK as a whole votes to come out and we vote to stay in and we get taken out against our will – you can’t possibly defend that.”

Carmichael, confident in the certainty that Scotland, as part of the UK, would retain EU membership thanks to the guidance of Miliband, Clegg and Cameron, dismissed Sturgeon’s concerns.

“Everybody is wrong on European Union membership apart from you,” he said to Sturgeon with a barely detectable whiff of sarcasm.

Four and a half years on from the STV debate, it seems Carmichael's comments have not aged so well.