IN THE febrile atmosphere of Unionist false outrage and fake mortification, you wonder what might have happened had Trainspotting been released this week and not 21 years ago.

One scene in particular would have caused the rent-an-offence social media lynch mobs to have choked on their kedgeree. It’s the famous “Great Outdoors” scene when Renton cuts short Tommy’s plan to climb Leum Uilleim with a coruscating soliloquy about living in a servile state.

“Some hate the English. I don’t,” says Renton. “They’re just w*****s. We, on the other hand, are colonised by w*****s. Can’t even find a decent culture to be colonised by.”

The usual suspects would be lining up to pillory Irvine Welsh, on whose literary masterpiece the film was based.

Alistair Darling would be wheeled out to say something like: “This is just the sort of thing I would expect from the playground, not a so-called novelist. I’d urge decent people who value our shared heritage with England to boycott the film.”

The Labour Party in Scotland would have dismissed Welsh as a typical arty type who’d become obsessed with nationalism. Some of JK Rowling’s social media acolytes would have asked the great woman to tell us how Professor Dumbledore might have reacted.

The Daily Mail would have condemned it, then bought up the serialisation rights.

“We feel people have a right to know what we’re fighting against,” their leader writer would have said.

I wondered if Nicola Sturgeon was thinking of Mark Renton’s speech following the decision by the Supreme Court Justices to force the UK Government to hold a parliamentary vote before it triggers Article 50. It goes without saying, of course, that the First Minister might have put it more daintily. As it was, there was exasperation and no little anger in her immediate response yesterday to the news that, although Westminster must now be consulted, the devolved administrations will be denied that democratic instrument.

“It is vital that the Westminster Parliament is now given the fullest possible opportunity to debate and decide upon the triggering of Article 50 and also the terms of the UK’s negotiating position,” she said. “SNP MPs will seek to work with others across the House of Commons to stop the march towards a hard Brexit in its tracks. We are obviously disappointed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in respect of the devolved administrations and the legal enforceability of the Sewel Convention. It is now crystal clear that the promises made to Scotland by the UK Government about the Sewel Convention and the importance of embedding it in statute were not worth the paper they were written on.”

This is the story so far. David Cameron, a bumbling Old Etonian multi-millionaire whose family fortunes have been reinforced by a Panama-based tax-avoidance vehicle is facing opposition from truculent right-wingers over Europe.

Rather than stand up to them he meekly agrees to an in-out referendum on Europe after the 2015 General Election, secure in the knowledge it will never happen.

Unfortunately, he wins an overall majority thus depriving him of horse-trading the EC referendum out of existence. The campaign duly unfolds and several unprincipled and careerist hard-right Tories view the debacle as an opportunity to either advance their careers or, in the case of Liam Fox, recover his.

And so mild, reasonable and cautious England collapses in on itself in a vortex of racism, lies and naked political ambition. The de facto leader of the country is Nigel Farage, and Ukip, with just one parliamentary seat to its name, is calling the tune throughout the land. England and Wales vote to leave Europe while Scotland and Northern Ireland vote to stay. In Scotland the vote is 2-1 in favour of Remain.

Within hours it becomes clear that the party of government did not have the merest idea of what to do next. It subsequently emerges that the leaders of the Leave side did not believe much of what they were telling people. Furthermore, they were simply using the campaign to gain leverage in the Conservative Party and to unseat Cameron.

Next, they thought they could stay in the single market but restrict free movement of people. Now they think they can withdraw from the world’s most successful trading bloc and have Britain make its own deals throughout the world. And, in by no means the final humiliation, the highest judges in the land effectively command them to consult Parliament. This is 21st-century England, a once-proud country now being run by a cabal of rank, grasping, incompetent Nationwide League third-raters and dancing to the tune of a pantomime clown in a covert coat. Where does that leave Scotland, which permits these characters to run the country even when it has become clear they are utterly incompetent?

Scotland, in the prophetic words of Mark Renton, “can’t even find a decent culture to be colonised by”.

Scotland is a country whose natural oil wealth would have made it one of the richest in Europe. Instead, oil was used to pay off the miners and pay down UK debt so that we could launch an unregulated financial services industry containing the seeds of its own destruction. And when a report into the worth of the oil boom was produced, it was deliberately kept from the Scottish people. Only when, momentarily, oil lost its lustre, did the UK Government bring it into play as a propaganda tool during the first independence referendum.

Large swathes of Scots also seemed happy to accept the English Conservative fiction Scotland was an equal part of the Union and that it would break their heart were we to leave. As this was happening, David Cameron was preparing to embarrass Gordon Brown with his English Votes for English Laws initiative. Soon, we would be taken out of Europe, despite guarantees in the independence referendum.

Now it seems neither the opinion of the First Minister of Scotland, nor the Scottish Parliament, nor the mutually agreed conventions are considered worthy of consultation on the change in the nation’s history.

The next independence referendum will determine not only whether Scotland is to be independent but also how much self-respect it still possesses.