Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the weekly podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you all very much for tuning in from around the world, wherever you are.

And what a time for us all to get together.

Politics at the moment, it seems to me, is like one of

those brilliant thrillers where nothing is quite what it seems. You know what I mean? There's a

sort of surface which is obvious, and yet underneath things are a little different. And in that

sense, politics at the moment is even more compelling,

really, than Brexit, because Brexit, it was a thriller, a helter-skelter ride, but it was all on the

surface. We could all at every twist and turn see what was happening and why it was happening. Don't get me wrong, it was

historically significant, the consequences are far from played out. Well, look at the election

results on Thursday as one example and look at the problems with trade as another and in Northern

Ireland. But you could see the thrills.

There was no mystery.

Now it feels to me slightly different.

Let's take the example of Nicola Sturgeon.

There she is unquestionably triumphant.

You know, the winning again and almost getting an overall majority for the

SMP and a parliament where a voting system was designed to prevent any party getting close

to an overall majority, having been the incumbent for a long, long time is a triumph.

And yet she doesn't fully know how to get this referendum.

She's working on the assumption or hope that political pressure will do it.

But the legal position is clear.

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