Should Scotland become independent?

The rerun is almost eerie in its fidelity to the original. Twelve years after Scotland voted 55-45 to stay, this chamber landed on near-identical ground, with No beating Yes by a wide 26-point margin, suggesting that whatever Brexit, fiscal rows and North Sea revenues have done to the argument, they have not shifted the underlying balance of opinion much at all.

The generational pattern is the more interesting story than the topline. The 55-64s, old enough to remember both the 2014 vote and its promises of a "once in a generation" settlement, were the most hardened against a second attempt, while women in the chamber split down the middle even as men leaned decisively toward No — a gender gap that echoes the 2014 result itself, when women were likewise the more reluctant nationalists.

That this vote reproduces 2014 so closely, despite everything that has happened since — a Brexit Scotland didn't vote for, years of constitutional wrangling, a Westminster government still refusing a referendum — says something about how frozen this fault line has become. Neither side's arguments seem to be moving many people any more; they are simply reasserting positions dug in over a decade ago.

If there is a message here for Holyrood's repeated demands for indyref2, it's a sobering one: even those willing to vote on the question again aren't voting differently.