A short generation in Scotland

Maybe they reach sexual maturity very young in Scotland. What else could explain the fact that they are going to have another referendum on Scottish independence only three years after the last one?

The Scottish referendum on independence in 2014 was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation event. That was the one thing that then-British Prime Minister David Cameron and then-Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond agreed on: even a one-vote majority would settle the matter for a generation.

In fact, the majority to stay in the United Kingdom was close to half a million. It couldn't have been a clearer outcome. There was none of the obfuscation for which Quebec's referendums on independence from Canada were famous (like the 106-word question in the 1980 referendum that did not even mention the word "independence").

The referendum in Scotland simply asked: "Should Scotland be an independent country" - and the Scots said "no" by a 55-45 percent majority. But only 30 months later, the next generation of Scots must already have arrived.

Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond's successor as leader of the Scottish National Party and first minister of the Scottish government, announced on Monday that there will be a second referendum on Scottish independence in late 2018 or early 2019. She didn't even have the grace to say best two out of three. 

It's Sturgeon's job to promote the idea of independence, of course, but she needed a plausible pretext to demand a re-run of Scotland's own referendum so soon. The English nationalists who committed the entire United Kingdom to leaving the European Union in last June's referendum gave her that pretext: 53 percent of the English voted to leave the EU, but 62 percent of Scots voted to stay.

Why such a...