I CAN’T help feeling a wee sense of pride that our First Minister is increasingly being lauded as the most mature, credible and sensible leader in the world.

On her visit to the Seanad Éireann in Dublin last week, she generated more excitement than Joe Biden, the Vice President of the USA. According to one Irish media pundit, politicians from across the spectrum, from Marxists to religious right-wingers, were falling over themselves to bathe in her reflected light.

Contrast her reception to the ridicule heaped on Boris Johnson by politicians right across Europe for his infantile Prosecco jibe at Italy. Scotland now has real stature on the world stage – and significantly, the Irish Senate talked of Scottish independence as if it was inevitable. And utterly normal. Nicola Sturgeon’s open, inclusive and progressive vision of Scotland, and her support for the free movement of people across the EU, starkly contrasts with the belligerent, jingoistic and intolerant Tory Brexiteer government. In a world where Donald Trump has taken the White House, Nicola Sturgeon looks like a visionary.

She is right to be seen to be jumping through hoops and knocking down barriers to implement the democratic will of the people of Scotland to stay in the EU. The 62 per cent who voted Remain would expect nothing less.

In England, where just more than 53 per cent voted to Leave, the mandate is not so clear cut – and could easily be turned upside down as the economic consequences hit home. Zac Goldsmith put his political future on the line and forced a by-election on a single issue – Heathrow. But the voters of Richmond Park had a different single issue in mind – Brexit.

Richmond, granted, is not typical of England. It voted 70 per cent to Remain. And a couple of years ago it topped a league table of Britain’s most prosperous areas for health, wealth and education. But if the well-to-do middle classes start swinging over to the LibDems in sizeable numbers, the Tory Party has a crisis on its hands.

The biggest fear of most MPs is that they lose their jobs. The chant “Brexit means Brexit” was driven by fear that any backsliding on the EU could mean multiple Tory bums removed from their green padded seats in Westminster.

Some Tories will surely now be wondering if backsliding on Brexit is exactly what they need to do to hang on to power.

This week the Supreme Court is likely to confirm that Article 50 can only be triggered by parliamentary legislation. The timetable for Brexit could then start to slip. And the longer the delay, the more England’s eyes will start to water at the costs. Brexit is not a still photograph, but a moving picture. And it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that at some point, the Westminster Parliament might draw back from the edge of the cliff, and either ignore or rerun the referendum vote.

As someone who voted Remain, the thought of a Tory U-turn on Brexit fills me with glee. But like countless thousands of other Remain voters in Scotland, my vote was anti-Brexit rather than pro-EU. I was sickened to the pit of my stomach by the rampant xenophobia, and at times outright racism, of the Leave campaign. I was forced to choose sides.

We now have a gaping democratic black hole at the heart of Scottish politics. May, Hammond and Mundell keep repeating the mantra “this was a UK referendum and the UK voted to leave” like schoolchildren writing lines in detention. But if they persist in ignoring the 1.6 million people in Scotland who vote to stay – four times more than voted Tory in the last General Election – their names will become, like that of Margaret Thatcher, forever infamous in Scotland. Nonetheless, I’m growing more and more uneasy that the case for independence is becoming ever more closely welded together with membership of the European Union. Who knows where the EU is headed. The 2017 French presidential election is shaping up to be contest between the ultra-conservative admirer of Thatcher, François Fillon, and the leader of the semi-fascist Front National, Marine Le Pen. In the Netherlands, another semi-fascist party – Geert Wilders’s "Party for Freedom" is leading the polls and could win next year’s general election.

Across Europe, the far right is starting to sense power. The future of the EU, once seen as an unshakeable monolith, starts to look quite fragile.

If the UK were to end up Remaining, England’s relief could coincide with a growing scepticism in Scotland towards a Europe that might look very different from the one we voted for on June 23 2016.

During the 2014 independence referendum, it was easy to accommodate Eurosceptics in the movement. The argument was clear: the people will be sovereign. The SNP’s policy of Independence in Europe was generally understood to be exactly that – their policy.

But there seems to be a growing assumption that independence equals membership of the EU – and it complicates the terrain. About 30 per of Yes voters voted to Leave, for a range of reasons, some of them progressive.

It’s also true that many No voters voted to Remain and are now more open to independence. It’s perfectly valid for us to remind these voters that Better Together claimed a Yes vote would wrench Scotland out of Europe.

But independence is not about a single vision. Independence is about sovereignty and allowing the Scottish people the right to choose, and change if necessary, our relationship with Europe – especially in this ever-changing world and rapidly shifting political context.