Alex Salmond seizes the initiative and boosts the chances of a second independence referendum in the event of Brexit

Alex Salmond is certainly a man who knows how to lay down a marker.  When he was asked during tonight's televised EU debate whether Brexit might lead to a second independence referendum, I'm sure many people were expecting him to give a cagey answer.  Instead his message was utterly uncompromising -

* A second referendum would be justified.

* It would happen within two years.

* There would be a mandate for it because a) there is a pro-independence majority in the elected Scottish Parliament (thus liberating us from the fatuous obsession with the questionable results of a single ICM opinion poll), and b) the SNP's share of the vote this month was greater than that received by any other lead party of government in the whole of western Europe.

As always, he made clear that he was expressing a personal view, and we know it's likely that there is a genuine difference of emphasis between himself and the more cautious Nicola Sturgeon.  So there's still wiggle-room for the SNP if Brexit occurs and for some reason they decide not to push for a second indyref.  But it's hard to believe Salmond would have spoken so emphatically unless there was a collective desire within the party to at least keep the option of a post-Brexit referendum firmly open - and that's what has been achieved.

Ultimately, this has always been a question of narrative more than arithmetic.  In the immediate aftermath of the election, the SNP were temporarily on the back foot, and they allowed both unionist politicians and unionist journalists to weave a narrative that the prospect of a second referendum had somehow receded.  That claim never had any rational basis, but it could easily have become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it hadn't been challenged in a telling way.  With perfect timing, Salmond has seized back the initiative and probably repaired pretty much all of the damage at a stroke.  His comments are currently the lead headline on the BBC news website, so they're going to be heard loud and clear.

And yes, I know some of you will be muttering to yourselves that Brexit isn't going to happen and this whole strategy will prove to be a dead end in a few short weeks.  But I don't know of anyone - bookies, academics, pundits - who rates the probability of a Leave vote as lower than 15%.  So it's a non-trivial chance, and we have to be prepared for it.

On the debate more broadly, I'm not sure whether the official campaigns were allowed to nominate their own representatives, but I presume that's unlikely (would Remain really have risked alienating Tory England by nominating Salmond, for example?).  If it was actually the BBC who made the selections, I can imagine that the Leave campaign may have been pretty unhappy with the line-up - it essentially framed the choice as being between pro-EU progressives and hard right Europhobes.  They could really have done with Kate Hoey being there in place of Diane James.  Even Tom Harris would have been better - we political obsessives may know all too well what he's really like, but most people don't, and he's just about capable of passing himself off as a progressive with a bit of effort.