It's tariffying... but the world has changed and Scotland's role in it too

TO think had we voted yes back in the day, Scotland might have got our own bespoke tariff in the White House Rose Garden this week, delivered by a US President qualified to play for our national team.

- Paul Sinclair

The world seemed a warmer place to be independent in back in 2014 before Donald Trump's version of nationalism - not forgetting Vladimir Putin's - redrew the world order.

Now the need for friends is greater and the pool of allies shallower.

If, or when, there is another referendum on our place in the UK, both sides will need to better future proof their offer than they did a decade ago.

(The 'if' I believe relies less on whether Westminster grants a referendum, and more on whether the SNP ever elect a leader who campaigns for one. They haven't since Alex Salmond.)

In 2014 we believed that, within or outwith the UK, we were part of a western alliance led by the US. That was one of the reasons what President Barack Obama said then mattered.

We were on the same page when it came to global free trade and defence through NATO. Not now.

This is arguably an even greater and more unexpected shift than Brexit, which no one foresaw 10 years ago either.

In Trump's world of tariffs, the bigger you are the more powerful you are. Safety in numbers is the only hope of protection and even that is thin. Even the EU treads carefully.