Hands up anybody who thinks Mundell is actually as confused and clueless as he makes out. Nobody? That's what I thought. What we are seeing here is a rather clumsy and decidedly feeble attempt to bounce Nicola Sturgeon into ruling out including a commitment to another independence referendum in the SNP's 2106 manifesto. All the British parties are desperate to get the subject off the agenda because they don't want to be put in the position of campaigning against the people of Scotland being allowed a say in the constitutional future of their nation. There is little doubt that fanatical opposition to a referendum played a significant part in the decline of the British parties in Scotland which led to the first real devolved Scottish Government in 2007 and the SNP majority in 2011. Regardless of whether or not people actually want a referendum they sure as hell don't want parties which have no mandate in Scotland telling them that they're not getting one. Apart from anything else, Mundell and his unionist cronies in British Labour would then have to explain exactly how they propose to prevent another referendum taking place. It is certain that they have been frantically searching for a way to surreptitiously create an effective constitutional barrier to any further referendums. But this was never going to be easy, and is made all the more difficult by the presence of 56 SNP MPs in the House of Commons and in the likes of the Scottish Affairs Committee. There's just too much scrutiny. It is worth noting at this point that the only time the British parties showed any real enthusiasm for a referendum was during the 2007-11 minority SNP administration. The reason they tried to goad the Scottish Government into bringing forward a Referendum Bill at Holyrood was that, having control of the committee stages, the unionist parties would have been in a position to sabotage the legislation in a variety of ways. As well as messing with the wording of the question and other such dirty tricks, they would almost certainly have sought to include a provision that would effectively rule out another referendum within a period of decades. Perhaps as long as fifty years. Needless to say, Salmond was way to smart to take that bait. Now, the British parties have a problem in that they would very much like to put Scotland in a similar constitutional situation to Catalunya, but cannot do so having already recognised Scotland's right of self-determination in the Edinburgh Agreement. Some will argue that this agreement was limited to the one referendum and that it now has no force. But that argument is hardly going to stand up against the Charter of The United Nations. Politically, it is a non-starter. Of course, last year's referendum was disingenuously portrayed as a generous gift from David Cameron and a token of the democratic beneficence of the British state. The reality is that Cameron would have refused the Section 30 Order if only he could. He was advised not to do so in part because it was thought that the anti-independence campaign would have an easy victory which would have the added bonus of destroying the SNP as a political force. But there was also the fact that the Scottish Government would have gone ahead and held a referendum even without Westminster's position. If the Section 30 Order was denied, the British state was facing the prospect of consultative referendum which would very likely produce a pro-independence result. At the very least, the UK Government would have been forced into an embarrassing U-turn on its refusal to allow a binding referendum. In short, the UK Government was obliged to let the 2014 referendum go ahead. And nothing has happened to make it any easier for them to refuse a Section 30 Order again. Quite the contrary, there is now a precedent as well as the prospect of defiance from a Scottish Government which enjoys the support of the third largest party in the UK and a clear majority of the Scottish electorate. The British establishment is in a bind. And very worried. Demand for another referendum is significant and growing. The SNP looks certain to win another majority at Holyrood in next year's elections. With a commitment in principle to another referendum in their manifesto based on that public demand and the UK Government's failure to honour the notorious vow, there will be an unchallengeable mandate for a new vote, Hardly surprising, then, that Mundell and his double-act partner, Ian Murray, are so desperate to get Nicola Sturgeon to dance to their tune. But Nicola is not there to be told by either of these upstarts.