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The worse fate for any stripper or burlesque dancer is when an audience get bored.

Will it be the posing pouch, the stockings or the nipple tassels that have to go?

If you don’t care, it has just become a person undressing in public.

Nicola Sturgeon is promising to peel off another layer in her cunning plan to hold IndyRef2.

She whipped the nation into a frenzy last month by announcing a new push for a second independence referendum just in time for the SNP party conference.

Then Parliament voted in favour of having the powers to hold a referendum.

It was over to Theresa May to give Sturgeon what she wants – or else.

Except, May has given nothing, so yet more exotic posturing is required.

Before departing for America on a jolly useful trip, Sturgeon told us that there would be news on her next moves when she got back.

However, the First Minister has ruled out the sexy bits.

The most politically erotic reveal would be to dissolve Holyrood and hold an election.

The drama.

If Scotland voted at either a Holyrood or a Westminster election for a manifesto which said, “If we win a majority of seats we shall take that as mandate to start independence negotiations” there would be very little the UK could do to resist.

But there will be no Full Monty moment of that kind, as Sturgeon has ruled out holding an election.

She could entrance us with a glimpse of an unofficial referendum. This would lack the legal status of a proper IndyRef2 but would be, in the jargon, indicative.

However, this too has been ruled out.

She is left, perhaps, with pushing a referendum bill through Holyrood on a loophole discovered by MSP Sandra White when she was agitated by double parking – it really is as exciting as that.

White was initially instructed by Holyrood lawyers that she could not table a bill on car parking because an aspect of it was reserved to Westminster.

Furious, she stormed off into the small print and came back with a trick – it turned out a reserved matter could be discussed, it just couldn’t be enacted without Westminster’s approval.

So it is that the Scottish Government might announce that they will proceed with a referendum bill which requires Westminster to approve it.

Excited? No? Thought not.

The SNP administration behave in this teasing manner because they don’t want to lose our attention but nor do they actually want to have sex, in the metaphorical sense.

Scotland being gripped to find out what new bit of political flesh is on display is good for SNP supporters and suggests something is happening.

(Image: Getty)

It is also good for endlessly taunting prude May, who would rather everyone kept their political clothes on and stopped messing about.

But the Scottish Government don’t actually want us to get so excited we immediately demand a few sweaty seconds in the ballot box.

It suits Sturgeon to stay in government, keep a mild level of independence arousal ongoing and wait.

The question is: Can Scotland bear months and years of constitutional teasing?

There is no sign last month’s Holyrood vote in favour of having the powers to hold IndyRef2 has turned on voters.

Sturgeon promises to lay out plans to “advance the will of parliament” but does so without a groundswell of popular enthusiasm.

She is in danger of pushing the will of parliament further than the will of the people – and in Scotland, it is the people who are sovereign.

Her main pitch will be that it is Scotland’s right to choose its own future – a dramatic climbdown from

last month when a referendum was urgent because of Brexit.

Her problem is that Scotland already has that power – it’s called elections.

It is the SNP, not Scotland or the Tories, who insist a referendum is the only path to independence, a policy invented by Alex Salmond in the late 1990s.

Before that, a simple election majority was enough – as it probably still is.

It’s now 1236 days since the Scottish Government published anything on

the details of independence – a pause so long it is beyond dramatic and suggests paralysis.

We are then watching the world’s slowest dance of the seven veils by someone with a phobia about being naked – and that may get boring quite soon.