Those who know me well are familiar with my tactic of putting something inevitable off by saying I will do it “in a minute”.

The UK Tory party has a similar approach, but the words they use are: “Now is not the time” .

This was Theresa May’s mantra when confronted with the SNP’s demand for a referendum in 2017. She argued that only once the detail of post-Brexit Britain was seen could an informed decision be made about Scotland’s future by Scotland’s people.

Apparently she believed, or at least pretended to believe, that this post-Brexit future would be so rosy that no one would be able toresist it.

Well, as the old preacher put it, you ken noo.

Yet, once again, the phrase is on the lips of a Tory Prime Minister and is being eagerly brayed in chorus by his representatives in Scotland including wee Douglas Ross and the Secretary of State against Scotland, Alister Jack.

This time their excuse is the pandemic and the need to rebuild before, you guessed it, an informed decision can be made about Scotland’s future by Scotland’s people.

May was wrong in 2017 and Boris Johnson is wrong now.

In 2017, the time to decide was before the UK left the EU so that a transitionary process for Scotland – a sort of curving back for re-entry without having gone too far – could get underway.

The UK Government’s expectation at that time was that exit would be easy and that a future trading relationship would be close to the Single Market and Customs Union model from which we benefited so much. Only a few people predicted that the far right would take power and dictate an increasingly threadbare outcome, under the guise of restoring a “global Britain” which never existed.

However, too many people in Scotland gave the UK the benefit of the doubt in the 2017 election to allow the issue to be forced and we are now suffering the consequences.

That must not happen again for it is now even more crucial that we secure the consent of the people of Scotland to move to independence.

Now is the time – the time to choose independence for if that choice is not made as we start the once-in-several-lifetimes process of rebuilding from Covid, then we will miss a major, indeed generational, opportunity to make a new Scotland.

The Tory argument that rebuilding must come first is deliberately dishonest. It is meant to make us miss the boat.

How we rebuild and what we become after the pandemic are the key issues for the coming years. Who leads the task is the central question and will determine what follows.

We are clear that it must be a Scottish Government, in tune with the nation and empowered to do everything that is necessary. Yet Douglas Ross and Alister Jack want Scots to leave all the decisions to Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees Mogg who will – inevitably – build a country, as they have built a political party, in their own image.

That is not the Scotland we would ever seek nor could ever inhabit.

“Building back better” should mean what it says, not building back even worse, and more distant from Europe and the world.

Across Europe the words signify an intention to move forward from the pandemic in a different way, creating a new society founded on shared values and in tune with the planet.

The Tory version, however, is one in which cronyism rules, in which a perpetually Tory dominated out of touch Westminster is supreme, in which Scottish resources and ingenuity are exploited whilst our rights are trampled, and in which alliances and trade deals are made with anyone no matter how distasteful, and without any thought of standards, ethics or principles.

They want to build not back, but backwards. Backwards to a time in which inequality was the basic building block for British society and in which money and privilege ruled over all.

They are also democracy deniers, every bit as bad as Trump.

The right to a referendum, secured by popular mandate, has already been won by the SNP. In May it will be explicit, and based on proposed legislation.

If earned in that way it will be acted up on , and swiftly.

Our national future depends upon that choice, because only by making it will we be able to build the country we now need.

Now must be the time, no matter what a UK Government says.