While the Left-wing commentariat delighted in tearing apart the more Panglossian claims of Brexiteers, rarely did they examine the SNPs quixotic vision of independence, featuring every imaginable reward and no responsibility whatsoever for funding it. The Nats were instead allowed to fall back on their two-pronged knee-jerk defence; any Westminster failure was an argument for independence; every Holyrood failure the result of too little independence.
Others simply saw in Sturgeon what they wanted to see. With a distinct shortage of strong, progressive Europhile leaders, and the SNPs charismatic chieftain exuding power and competence, it was easy to ignore their actual policies and rhetoric. But the SNP were never cuddly social democrats, the tartan Lib Dems, as was sometimes claimed far from it.
The SNP take great umbrage at being described as nationalist. Yet not only do they flaunt their nationalism; they subscribe to an aggressive form of it rarely seen in UK politics one rooted in a virulent anti-English hostility and the use of othering language to sow division. Unionists are routinely cast as traitors, fifth columnists or somehow less Scottish than their nationalist counterparts. Last summer, the First Minister, who kept pushing for independence throughout the pandemic, struggled to conceal her glee at the thought of quarantines for English arrivals into Scotland.
At times, the progressives blinkered worldview meant countenancing behaviour they would have strongly condemned elsewhere. Many ignored Sturgeons regular Trumpian attacks on journalists and remained largely silent when she began using her daily Covid briefings to push overtly political statements. The SNPs decision to fly the EU flag outside Scottish government buildings all year round, while only flying the Union flag on Remembrance Sunday, was a transparent attempt to divide which could have been ripped from the Trump playbook. Once again it passed largely unchallenged; this was the right kind of nationalism after all.
Years of being a big fish in a small pond, however, have left Sturgeon allergic to interrogation. Under scrutiny from high-calibre questioners like Labour’s Jackie Baillie and Ruth Davidson of the Conservatives, Sturgeons Manuel-like protestations of ignorance I know nothing   are sounding increasingly ridiculous.
It is not yet clear whether she will be forced to resign, though her followers are already behaving like devout Corbynistas in the final days of Jezza; crowing about an alleged influx of new party members, and issuing identically-worded tweets in support of the Dear Leader. With luck, forthcoming sessions of the inquiry will nullify the SNPs inexplicable talent for pulling the woollen plaid over the eyes of the rest of Britain.