Last weekend marked 100 days since the EU referendum.

Those hundred days have been the most tumultuous in UK politics that any of us can remember.

Of course, a majority of people in Scotland voted to Remain.

Despite this, we still face being dragged to the EU exit door.

As First Minister, my duty is to stand up for Scotland’s national interests.

The Scottish Government is exploring every possible option to do just that, and I welcome the Prime Minister’s assurance that Scotland will have a key role in the UK-wide negotiation process.

I have to say, though, three months on and despite recent announcements from the U.K. Government, I’m not any clearer about what the Tory Government’s objectives are.

We’ve had plenty of Cabinet Ministers telling us what they think should happen - only for their comments to be quickly dismissed by Number 10 as ‘personal opinions’.

And we’ve had plenty of senior Tories becoming ‘Born-again Brexiteers’. People like Ruth Davidson who warned about the economic consequences of leaving the EU, now cynically claim that Brexit will be fantastic.

But what we don’t have yet - despite her saying that she’ll trigger Article 50 within six months - is any clear steer from the Prime Minister about what she wants to achieve.

This really matters.

For example, there are tens of thousands of EU citizens who have no idea whether they will be allowed to remain here.

And our universities don’t know what will happen to the vital EU research funding they currently receive.

But today I’ll focus on just one question on which the Prime Minister needs to give urgent clarity - whether she wants the UK, when it leaves the EU, to remain a member of the Single Market.

Everywhere I go at the moment, companies are telling me that this is the number one issue for them.

And I fully understand why.

It’s through membership of the Single Market that our businesses are able to trade freely - without barriers or tariffs - with a market of more than 500 million people.

It’s such an ingrained part of the way our companies operate, that it’s easy to take this access for granted.

Just like we take for granted the fact that we can currently live, work or go on holiday to Europe without having to apply for a visa - or pay any kind of holiday tax.

A recent hard-hitting report from the Government of Japan - one of our biggest non-EU trading partners - warned that pulling out of the Single Market could see a loss of company headquarters, exports being hit, investment being cut and damage to financial services.

In fact, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated recently that it could cost the UK about 4% of GDP - that’s the same as roughly two years of economic growth.

At the moment, it feels like the Prime Minister is the only person in the UK government not to have a view on this central issue.

Many of her senior Ministers - Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis - are implying that they think Britain should pull out of the Single Market.

These people are all right-wing even by Tory standards - which should speak for itself.

But as long as there is no clear direction from the Prime Minister, then this talk is all that people are hearing.

There were reports last week that European diplomats are becoming increasingly convinced that the UK is heading for a ‘hard’ Brexit.. The message rippling across the EU is that the UK will be closed for business.

Now, Scotland didn’t vote for any of this - we voted to Remain in the EU.

But even across the UK, there is no clear mandate to leave the Single Market.

48% across the U.K. voted to Remain, as did two of the four countries in the UK. And many of those who argued for a Leave vote said that it didn’t mean exit from the single market.

With such a divided vote, retaining the UK’s membership of the Single Market is the most obvious consensus position.

Before the referendum, I and many others repeatedly warned that a UK vote to leave the EU would spark a right-wing Tory takeover of the UK Government - the people who describe EU employment rights and social protections as ‘red tape’.

From what we’ve seen so far, those predictions look to be correct.

So before this momentum becomes unstoppable, Theresa May needs to put the brakes on all this talk of a hard Brexit - and fast.

She needs to stop this right-wing Tory takeover in its tracks.

We cannot afford for the next hundred days to be like the last.