I WORRY about the mental and physical welfare of assorted senior members of the Labour Party in Scotland; I really do. Ever since the end of the first referendum on Scottish independence they have been forming a disorderly queue to reveal their terror at the prospect of a second referendum. As each of them slopes forward, their hands shaking and their whispered voices barely audible, they describe in apocalyptic terms the terrifying ordeal they all suffered during the first one.

At Holyrood yesterday as they continued to write the longest suicide note in history, it became clear that this has ceased to be a political party at all; it is now a survivors’ group. The referendum was “divisive”; people were being chased up streets by marauding nationalists. They couldn’t even take refuge on social media because there be cybernats, ready to pounce on them with beastly and vile calumnies.

If Kezia Dugdale grows any more fretful about the terrors that lie in store during the second referendum I fear we may have to call in a detachment of UN peacekeepers. Amidst the ruins of Mosul what remains of the population speak not of the terrors they have endured these past few years at the hands of Daesh but instead thank God and The Prophet that they didn’t live in Scotland in 2014.

The Labour Party in Scotland, of course, dances to a different tune when attacking the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. When supporters of the legislation attempt to cite instances of alleged threatening behaviour or unkempt utterances by marauding football fans, Scottish Labour mock them and advise them to get over themselves. It’s just the banter, they claim. Perhaps it is, but when something far less baleful is espoused by a Yes supporter it becomes not merely abuse but “shocking” abuse. They can’t have it both ways.

The “nasty” and “divisive” referendum was one of the main fantasies propagated by Better Together as its desperation grew in proportion to the incompetence of its leadership. This myth, though, was knocked down by the Electoral Reform Society who said that the referendum campaign was a pillar of civic engagement and set a global gold standard. Police Scotland cited only a handful of misdemeanours, all of them perpetrated by pro-UK supporters.

In the past year or so, three of the other big fake narratives deployed by the No side have been demolished. Ruth Davidson’s assertion that a vote to stay in the UK was a vote to remain in the European Union has long since turned to ashes in her mouth. The GERS figures and the £15 billion deficit are now, by broad agreement, a guesstimate made by Westminster Treasury department officials that admit they are a dodgy indicator of what the finances of an independent Scotland might look like. And those finances look considerably brighter following the report of a major oil find off Shetland that could generate more than one billion barrels.

So, it’s been a wretched week for those campaigning to stay in the UK. An implacably hard-right Tory government has propelled the rest of the UK into the oblivion of a Ukip wet dream. In this all the foreigners get kicked out and they get to show those damned Frogs and Krauts who’s really the boss. The dire economic forecasts for an independent Scotland have been proven not to be too shabby at all and we could be on the verge of a second oil boom. Only this time around it will be difficult to conceal oil tax revenues in the same way as they kept the McCrone report in a Treasury department vault for 30 years. This is what happens, you see, when you let too many of the great unwashed engage in the political progress: they get ideas above themselves and start to ask awkward questions.

And so, in a spirit of civic benevolence, born of my desire to make the next independence referendum a much more fragrant affair, I hereby offer Better Together and Scotland in Union a few ideas for their faltering campaign. They must be reeling at seeing their favourite themes disappearing one by one. But by jove when the balloon goes up, the chips are down and the lights go out, that is the time to show their mettle with some of my revised referendum narratives.

1. Concoct a plan with the Daily Telegraph to find secret documents in the rubble of another coalition drone strike in Iraq proving that Alex Salmond is a long-standing golf buddy of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il since they were students at St Andrews University.

2. In the second part of a Telegraph two-day expose, reveal to a stunned Scottish public how Salmond sold rare whisky recipes to Daesh to pay off gambling debts.

3. Hire a world-renowned body language expert to show that Nicola Sturgeon possesses psychopathic tendencies by the way she purses her lips and crosses her legs.

4. Demonstrate how the First Minister’s choice of shoes by Pierre Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik show how the SNP would squander the nation’s oil wealth.

5. Reveal that Black Sabbath decided they couldn’t go on because they were emotionally distraught at the prospect of the Union being broken.

6. Revealed: SNP’s Top Secret Plan to Rebuild Hadrian’s Wall.

7. Also revealed: SNP Slammed As Hadrian’s Wall Plan Doomed to Failure Because of PPI concerns.

8. Make informed speculation that Alex Salmond is reconciled with Donald Trump. Reveal that the SNP have offered the embattled President an escape route from his White House hell by offering him the tourism brief in an independent Scotland.

9. As the countries in the Axis of Evil learn of Scotland’s intention to ditch the nukes, reveal plans for a secret Iranian/North Korean/Taliban task force to make an amphibious landing on the River Tweed and invade England.

10. Leak a story to the Daily Express that Edinburgh will be reduced to a ghost town as all English nationals are rounded up and placed in internment camps.

I’m sure the second independence referendum will be a jolly sporting affair and that we can heal the wounds of division when the dust settles.