Nicola Sturgeon: I’ll be the judge

Will she, or won't she? Nicola Sturgeon is a phenomenon in her own party and outside it.

But walk past the stalls, notice the memorabilia, talk to her party members at the SNP's conference in Aberdeen and there is one theme that is impossible for Ms Sturgeon to avoid - whether or not she will decide to propose a second vote on Scotland becoming an independent country.

At the opening of her party's conference she did her best to both keep the hope alive for her party, but to manage their expectations about when that might come, and send a message to the rest of the Scottish voting public that she, and the rest of the SNP, are not just obsessed with achieving independence.

Trigger

The first minister, as accomplished a politician as any in the UK in 2015, wants to focus on the first task in hand, staying in charge in Edinburgh - where she faces Scottish Parliament elections next May - and winning a historic third term.

Yet as the SNP dominates its rivals, Scotland's future in the UK does not feel remotely settled.

That's why it is impossible for her to escape the speculation about a potential date for another vote that would separate Scotland from the rest of the UK.

And that's why it matters that she told the BBC today for the first time, that the results of the Scottish elections next year will not be a trigger for another referendum.

So if it is not straightforward electoral success, what will it be? She has said repeatedly if the rest of the UK votes to leave the EU that could be a trigger for another vote.

'I judge'

But she and the rest of the leadership are not willing to set any other fixed tests, referring again and again to a "consistent and clear" shift in public opinion. In short - they'll only go for it when they think they can win.

Even if, as some senior figures in the party believe, anti-Tory feeling will swell in the coming months after the next round of cuts comes in, even if the government votes to approve Trident sooner rather than later, and even if the UK did vote to leave the EU, a decision to go for another vote still needs to be made.

And Ms Sturgeon has told me it will be "determined by what the majority of people want", but was strikingly clear about who will decide when that time comes.

She is not setting a series of tests, but saying, clearly: "It is down to whether we judge, I judge, that people who voted 'No' last time have changed their minds."