The National:

THEY must have thought they were very clever when they started an anti-independence petition – but now the Yoons have gone and shot themselves through both feet with every barrel of a Gatling gun on amphetamines.

For yesterday around noon, the online petition on the UK Parliament petitions website entitled “Do not give consent for another Scottish independence referendum” reached its target of 100,000 signatures.

The initiator of the petition, one V Rooth, wrote on the petition intro: “The SNP Government appears solely intent on getting independence at any cost.” That may come as a surprise to some Yessers.

Rooth added: “The independence referendum was called a once in a generation vote – so let it be.” That conveniently forgets that Northern Ireland can have one every seven years, a timescale for Scotland that will be reached on September 18 this year.

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The petition was started in late January and gained 10,000 signatures, quickly forcing the Tory Government’s “Scotland Office” into a reply: “The UK Government continues to respect the decision of the people of Scotland who voted decisively in 2014 to remain part of the United Kingdom” ... blah, blah, blah.

Now that the magic 100,000 figure has been reached, the petition must be “considered for debate in Parliament” as it states on the website.

What an absolutely spectacular own goal. They have put Boris Johnson into a perilous pickle which, for once, is not of his own making.

Does he let the debate go ahead in the Commons where the full panoply of the Unionists’ pop-eyed spitting rage against independence will be displayed, not to mention their snivelling fear of a second referendum?

Or does he just say “move along, nothing to see here”, thus enraging his fellow Unionists by being cowardly and going against their wishes?

Either way he’s going to annoy a lot of people, and we can happily predict that if the debate goes ahead, what a recruiting video it will provide for the Yes movement.

Fundamentally anti-democratic, the petition is obviously the work of Britnat dunderheids of very little brain. The vast majority of the signatories are Scottish, and no doubt many will say they are intelligent people, but they have lumped themselves in with rabid anti-democratic Union flag-wavers of the sort you see hurling swearie words at an All Under One Banner march.

They simply won’t see they have just handed the Yes movement a boost by baffling Boris. Long may it continue.