In a remarkable turn of events, Scotland just put England out of Europe.
No, no – don’t choke on your warm lager. This was not football.
It was politics – about the only field where England and Scotland can meet without the outcome contravening some kind of international law.
And, make no mistake, it was a clash between Boris’ England and Nicola’s Scotland.
Of course, there were others on the stage apart from the two heavyweights.
Amber Rudd? The closest the Energy Secretary has come to being a household name was a brief marriage to food critic A.A. Gill.
Andrew Leadsom? So obscure that at one point even the presenter forgot her name.
Oh, and there were the other two. That one that now scowls beside Jeremy Corbyn, and the one that used to scowl behind Gordon Brown.
Even ITV knew what people were there to see. This was the England versus Scotland clash of the summer – and it showed.
Nicola – as she is inevitably known south of the border – is no stranger to such battles.
Her performance was almost a verbatim reenactment of the glorious 2015 election debate, where she was viewed as the outright winner and champion of anti-austerity politics.
Back then, of course, no one – not even people in Scotland, let alone those in England – could actually vote for the SNP leader.
She had no such luxury this time. Being the figurehead in the debate for the pro-EU side, she had to make the case for all of the UK to stay in – and, in that, she largely failed.
Of course, her rhetoric will have gone down well in Scotland and parts of liberal London, which is fertile ground for her left-wing, right-on, politically correct pomposity.
Yet, like it or not, it is the south-east and north of England where the EU referendum will be won and lost.
You don’t have to be a political scientist to realise that a environmentalism infused with a trumpeting of multiculturalism is likely to go down badly among voters in Sunderland and Sussex.
For better or worse, in the battle of north versus south Boris had a more nuanced handle on exactly what his supporters wanted to hear – and how to sway those on the fence.
Naturally, Nicola deserves praise for sticking to her guns, albeit like a Lehman Brother trader fixated on sub-prime mortgages.
But the truth is – as a pro-European in a UK referendum debate on a panel with nobodies – it was Nicola’s job to make the case for all of Britain.
In that, she failed – and, at the very least, helped England crash out of Europe.
