Forget Labour's D:Ream anthem, things won't get any better while we're in the UK

It sums up the optimism in the air when a failing government finally collapses – or when a discredited Prime Minister or party leader is eventually dragged from office.

Of course it was high time that Johnson went, but welcome as that is, things are never going to get better for Scotland whilst Westminster remains in charge.

Unfortunately we suffer from what might be called the “reverse Cassandra syndrome” in which those who, at crucial times, promise, “faster, better and safer change” (copyright Jim Murphy and Gordon Brown along with the 2014 Better Together gang) are always enthusiastically believed and then hyped by a media which does its damnedest to make the public follow that lead by playing on their hopes and fears.

Yet, despite their confident predictions, these reverse Cassandras have been proved wrong again and again.

After 1979, our economy was destroyed not by Scotland choosing devolution but by failing to secure it before Margaret Thatcher took power.

After 2014, Scotland was forced out of the EU – not by choosing independence, but by failing to choose it.

And, of course, that arch enemy of Scottish self-determination, Boris Johnson, was elected to lead the Tory party and did become the wrecking, lying Prime Minister he was bound to be despite the regular and sneering assurances that it could never happen.

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Nonetheless, forgetfulness still abounds this weekend.

The Scottish press pack, obsessed with “SNP Bad” is once again claiming that a new leader will strengthen the Union – whilst the BBC maintains that he or she “will shift the political landscape”.

That is, of course, what they said about Johnson three years ago (and how wrong they were). But it also ignores the plain and simple facts which suggest continuing bad news for Scotland.

Firstly, the electorate which will choose the new Prime Minister – the membership of the Tory party – is still firmly wedded to the disaster of Brexit and contemptuous of Scottish democracy.

Secondly, those poisonous preferences are shared by the only alternative Westminster Government.

The surest way for a Tory leadership contender to fall at the first fence will be to suggest that Brexit was not only a horrendous mistake but that it needs to be reversed as soon as possible.

Conversely, the best pitch will be to shout stridently about “Brexit benefits” that must be delivered (without being able to specify a single one) and promise an intensification of the revolution no matter what it takes.

The fact that this will exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis and further alienate international opinion (already horrified by breaches of the rule of law and spooked by the events of the last few days) will be of no importance during the contest and any nod and wink that after winning things can be made to turn out differently will be as false as it turned out to be in Johnson’s case.

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The truth is that the Tories have been in the grip of a growing anti-European and increasingly xenophobic fever for the past 30 years or more. It has infected the party from top to bottom and driven out any other view – and it will not pass in a single internal election.

There is, therefore, absolutely no comfort to be had on the key issue that determines the context for Scotland’s economic and governmental future.

The effects of Brexit will get worse, not better, and all attempts by Scotland’s Parliament to mitigate them will be undermined as will our continuing demand for the right to choose our own future.

For just as the hardest of Brexits will not be softened by the contest, so all the candidates for the Tory leadership will have to profess a dying-day loyalty to the Union, and vie with each other in their contempt for both the SNP and its mandate.

That will be music to the ears of the electorate for the contest, which is, in the first part, Tory MPs and in the second, Tory members, which, of course, further diminishes any Scottish input or voice.

In the successive ballots during which the number of candidates is whittled down to two, there will be six Scottish votes out of 358. That equates to just more than 1.5% of that electorate.

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Then in the second stage, of the almost 200,000 members (as claimed by the Tories last year), it seems that under 10,000 are in Scotland. That membership will also be – as Tory membership has been shown to be in studies – older and significantly less representative of the population as a whole, to put the problem kindly. It will certainly be virulently anti-independence and anti-referendum.

Crucially, we now know that Labour has exactly the same position on Brexit and Scotland’s right to choose as the Tories. Consequently, Keir Starmer as Prime Minister would make no difference to the two key issues which will determine our standard of living: our ability to use our resources and our opportunity to make constructive partnerships with others. These are not abstract concerns, but absolutely basic to every aspect of Scottish life.

Scotland can therefore only move forward if it chooses independence and that can only come after either a decision by the Supreme Court on the matter referred to it by the Lord Advocate, or by means of an election, at which there is that clear choice given by the SNP and Greens.

Last week it looked as if the first would come before the second. Now we must demand that an election happens at once. That election must put to the test not just the right of Scotland to choose but what is now the vital, existential choice facing our country.