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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Iswell Harbin and I'm joined by James Forsyth and Katie Balls. And James, we have a bit of breaking news this morning,

which is that Boris Johnson has written to Nicola Sturgeon saying no to her demands for a second

Scottish independence referendum. Yes, it's not the longest of letters. It basically says

you and Alex Salmon

promised that this would be a once-in-a-generation vote and therefore the UK government will not give

you the powers to hold a second independence referendum. Obviously, the SMP will object to it.

The people will say it's disrespecting the results of a general election in Scotland.

I think this line just about can hold on the grounds that the SMP itself suggested its campaign in the general election wasn't just about independence.

In that final week, there was that pivot towards saying, look, if you just want to stop Brexit, vote SMP.

This will be a much more difficult position to maintain if at the 2021 Holyrood elections,

the SMP and the Greens combined win a majority, because then it will be able to say,

look, we ran on a platform of having a second independence referendum, and we won a majority

in the Scottish Parliament. And it wasn't about Brexit or other issues.

So, but I think it will do for now, but I think that the real challenge for the Tories,

who are having their own leadership contest in Scotland right now,

is to find a way for them and the other unionist parties to stop the SMP

from getting that majority in the 2021 holiday-reuth elections.

And Katie, you recently wrote about how one of the downsides of the recent election result

...