Scotland has been on a ten-year holiday from reality

SCOTLAND WASSNPSNP the first part of Britain to get high on populist referendums. In 2014, two years before the Brexit vote, the exhorted people to ignore the experts and revel in a glorious national renewal. The lost that battle but it won the peace. Since then the has triumphed in election after election. It has made the intoxicating cause of independence the principal dividing-line among Scottish voters. Nicola Sturgeon, the party’s leader until in February, managed to make liberals giddy, too, by being not just populist but progressive.