Numbers.

There was a demonstration on Saturday. Depending on who you listen to it was attended by somewhere between 10,000 and 90,000 nationalists. On any view a lot of nationalists. Having declined to put a single leadership figure on the platform for the rally which followed, towards the end of the event, the First Minister panicked and, believing the attendance to be nearer the latter than the former figure, sent, as a tweet, a single thumbs up.

And, do you know what, I really wasn't interested.

There is not going to be a second independence referendum any time soon. The constitutional position is clear, It requires the agreement of the UK Government and the UK Government isn't going to agree.

So, any attempt at such a vote will come to grief in the Supreme Court . And any attempt to defy the Supreme Court has a ready example of the former Catalan Education Minister fighting for her liberty in a different country a thousand miles away. Whilst in the meantime Catalan education policy is being run from Madrid. And nobody, even in Catalonia, seems to be that bothered about it.

But anyway, the whole, All behind a Fascist Banner event was just so much yesterday's politics. In reality, the only game in town, for the moment, is Brexit.

And the key players in that are the two brexiteers, Corbyn and Rees-Mogg.

To get a sensible deal, The Prime Minister needs a Commons majority and both are determined to deny her that. The second at least because he genuinely believes in the long term benefit of a year zero approach.

The motivation of the former however is more difficult to work out. Sure, he is no Europhile but I suspect it is also because he is, frankly, not very bright.

He simply hasn't worked out that there are no conceivable circumstances in which failure to get a Brexit deal would bring down the Government. That is because of the terms of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. There are, from time to time, demands, from one or other of side of the great Tory European schism, for votes on the Brexit legislation to made "confidence votes". But this is the constitutional politics of a different age. If May was to lose a vote on a critical part of this legislation, the Government would not fall. She could toddle along to the Palace the next day and ask the Queen for a dissolution but that would be refused. Because the only circumstance in which a UK General Election would take place before June 2022 is if either the House of Commons passed a vote expressly declaring it had no confidence in the current Government (not incidentally to something else but in these specific terms) or if a two thirds majority voted for an early election. (As happened last year).

Now, are either of these things likely, even conceivable, particularly after the Tory experience last year? Are there really any circumstances in which the Tories would take even the remote risk of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister? Or at best of the Commons arithmetic potentially becoming even more chaotic? The answer to that is no. And that's the calculation of the 60 or so hard core eurosceptics in the Tory ranks. They think they can vote down any attempt by May to reach a compromise in the knowledge that "their" Government would survive and indeed a chaotic, no deal, Brexit be the outcome resulting. Precisely their desired outcome.

And, unless something changes, they are not wrong.

So, something has to change. And the change has to be on our side.

Britain joined the EU by virtue of the European Communities Act 1972. But the then Prime Minister, Ted Heath, did not have a Commons majority within his own Party for that legislation. It passed because 69 Labour MPs, including John Smith, defied an opportunist Labour leadership of a different political stripe to get the Bill through.

On continued membership of the Customs Union, at least, Labour back-benchers should, in the national interest, to be willing to offer the Government support. As should the Lib Dems. The detail would need negotiating but surely one of the pro European Tories could be recruited to that role. And if, in its aftermath, Rees-Mogg and his crew want to go through the division lobbies with John McDonnell and Diane Abbott to bring down their own Government? I'd believe that when I saw it.

Time the tail stopped wagging the dog.

And time we, on our side, stopped thinking politics is a game.