Here’s what you can expect from May’s visit to Scotland

“It’s great to have you as a boost to the campaign trail, and how are you finding it so far?”

“Well, thank you very much, and it’s great to be with you here and thank you for everything that you’ve done for Scottish Conservatives with your leadership. But it’s great to be in Scotland because, as we look ahead to this General Election, really it is, I think, the most important election the UK has faced in my lifetime and every single vote is going to count, and every vote for me and my team will be a vote to strengthen our hand in the Brexit negotiations. That will strengthen the Union, it will strengthen the economy and together Scotland and the UK will flourish, and when Scotland is flourishing the United Kingdom is flourishing.”

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“And I guess as well it’s about making sure that as we leave the European Union our country comes together and we’re stronger as a Union?”

“Absolutely, I think now is the time for us to be working together, not pulling apart. That’s why we need to have a strong mandate, a strong negotiating hand in Europe, when I sit around the table with those prime ministers and presidents and chancellors of the other European countries and showing a United Kingdom that has come together and is determined to get the best possible deal. And you only get the best possible deal for Britain in Europe with a strong and stable government in Westminster and with strong and stable leadership, and that’s from me and my team.”

“Well, let’s take that strong message round the doors. Let’s go!”

The first prize for the hammiest TV clip of our time (still available on YouTube) goes to Theresa May and Ruth Davidson. For the purposes of a well-edited newspaper I’ve actually had to tidy up a bit the Prime Minister’s grammar and syntax, since we live under a leader of the UK who does not naturally speak in coherent sentences.

The dialogue between the two women reminds me of one between the Mekon and the Treens (you can tell I was brought up on Dan Dare). In the full version of the clip, for example, May always addresses Davidson as Ruth, while Davidson addresses May as Prime Minister. So, in an unscripted aspect, they reveal their true relationship of mistress and minion.

The conversation I’ve quoted formed the prelude to their canvass in the billionaire bit of Banchory during the Westminster election campaign of June 2017. This came right at the start of the campaign, but already the shrewd observer might have discerned the disaster awaiting the Tories. From the woeful lack of quality and coherence in the argument, what came across was a party trying to manipulate a situation it actually could not control, so that the constant repetition of the words “strong” and “stable” shone through only as forced and hollow. When May and Davidson did set off round the doors they found nobody at home, or at least nobody willing to talk to them. We may suspect the Prime Minister was secretly relieved: as the campaign went on, it grew clear how much she hated meeting real voters when she had sycophants on hand to butter her up. It did her no good in the end, but the woman is nothing if not shameless.

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On Thursday this week she is back in Scotland again. Of course she has popped in from time to time meanwhile, but only under the hermetic seals of the briefest of journeys from No 10 Downing Street to Bute House and straight back again. This time she can hardly avoid seeing actual Scots and hearing those dulcet tones. It is billed as part of a whistle-stop tour of the four nations of the UK, squeezed in on the last day before the Easter break, to sell the benefits of the Brexit deal, such as they are up to now.

Two questions at once arise about the Scottish leg of the journey, the first of which is: where will she actually go? I recall that when David Cameron as Prime Minister wanted to visit Holyrood he needed to enter and leave by the underground car-park in order to avoid unseemly scenes amid the protesters gathered round the front door. If May’s security staff have done their homework she can hardly be left to do a walkabout in Sauchiehall Street. She prefers to perform her (inevitably) set speeches against the background of a rent-a-crowd brandishing placards with approved slogans. Perhaps there are some rough sleepers who might be recruited in the city itself, against a suitable fee, but I fear most of the supporters may need to be bussed in from Newton Mearns.

Second question: what will she actually say? Despite her ministers’ attempts to trumpet a triumph in the past few days, the flimsy façade has already proved hard to prop up. This was, after all, a Brexit agreement only on the transitional issues, not in any sense a final deal, and even then not a fully complete agreement. On most matters at stake, the UK simply gave way to the EU position, following a pattern consistent since the negotiations began. The exception was Northern Ireland, but I can’t say anything useful about that here. More typical was the UK’s limp surrender on the question when it will cease to apply the common fisheries policy. This offers the EU every reason to expect it can continue to ride roughshod over the interests of Scottish fishermen in the future as it has done in the past, given how “expendable” they look from Westminster or Whitehall.

It seems unlikely that during her excursion May will be allowed to come face to face with Scots ready to pose the questions actually most relevant to the nation at the moment.

A big one is how we can avoid Brexit thwarting the deepest need of the Scottish economy, to raise its miserable rate of economic growth. For growth we need new technology, which we can invent. We need capital, which we can raise. But we also need labour, which we will not find from among an ageing population but only from immigration. The bigoted Tories’ aim of deterring and excluding immigrants works directly counter to our interests. And this is, of course, also closely connected with the Scottish Government’s aim of keeping us somehow in the EU’s single market with its free movement of labour.

It looks like May will come and go in the way she prefers: lecturing us word for word from her prepared script and stopping her ears to anything she does not want to hear. No doubt she will pepper her remarks with mentions of “our precious Union”, but the model of a Union she has in mind will be one where Scottish interests either conform to English interests or else are ignored. This is evidently part of what she means by strong and stable government, but nothing alters the fact that it has been weak and feeble from the start.