THE Tories have found a winning formula for elections: get down and dirty and appeal to the lowest, meanest instincts of pissed off people. To give them their due, it’s working. If a general election happened tomorrow, they’d crush all-comers.

But they should be careful, because the short-term buzz of poll numbers isn’t everything. The Tories aren’t meant to be simply an electoral force as their purpose is to stabilise the strategic interests of the British state and British high capitalism – the interests of the ruling class. But because Britain has become a one-party state they’ve forgotten this, and out of arrogance and pursuit of ideological purism they’re risking everything the British elite holds dear.

For once, the economy isn’t the Tories’ biggest problem. After nearly a decade of miserable failure post-2008, the British economy is, technically, actually doing a little better, although whether this improvement survives a “hard Brexit” remains uncertain.

However, the Tories have blundered into far deeper problems now. Brexit itself, added to the deep existential questions it poses about Scotland and Northern Ireland, means they are now fighting a war on three fronts. Tory policy is forcing the Scottish Government on to a war footing, against its own wishes, and has remarkably managed to destroy the assumption of a Unionist majority in Northern Ireland in a few short months.

All of this was avoidable. Theresa May could easily have appeased Scotland and Northern Ireland with a few throwaway concessions to “soften” Brexit. She had the intellectual and moral authority to do it. She was an unopposed leader of an unopposed government and nobody had a rival plan. In her leadership pitch all of her rhetoric was about “bringing the country together” and mending wounds; and let’s remember that May herself had campaigned against Brexit.

But instead of making even token gestures to Scottish and Northern Irish autonomy, the whole direction of Tory policy is tending the other way. Arrogant, ignorant and convinced of their own power, the Tories have been sabre-rattling about withdrawing powers from the Scottish Parliament and re-installing direct London rule over Northern Ireland.

Although they really should be concentrating everything on the actual process of Brexit – for which they lack even the basic ingredients of a plan – they are now also expending energy on opening up two new fronts in a disastrous cultural-constitutional war.

A second Scottish independence referendum looks increasingly unavoidable, whether Nicola Sturgeon really wants it or not. Theresa May has treated Scottish opinion and the elected Scottish Government with such open disdain that not holding one would be a death sentence for Scottish institutions.

If the Tories allow the referendum to go ahead, they can’t do a 2014 and rely on Scottish Labour to do their dirty work. Better Together mark two isn’t feasible: not if Kezia Dugdale has any remaining instinct for self-preservation. Scottish Labour’s predicament is bad enough without steering back to the campaign that first sent them into a tailspin. So May will have to turn her full attention to the Scottish question very soon. And Ruth Davidson, bound by hardball Westminster policy, will have little room to negotiate any concessions like the infamous “vow” of 2014.

Meanwhile, for the first time since Northern Irish devolution, the two main nationalist parties outnumber the two main unionist parties. Theresa May’s stance on Brexit has made a hard border with the Irish Republic inevitable. Britain has been casually drifting towards this since June and Northern Irish institutions are being given all the dignity and respect of a naughty toddler. Conflict could have been managed, easily, but stopping it now will be a huge undertaking.

The Tories might reply that they are more popular than ever. In Scotland, they’ve somehow recovered from the disastrous impact of their 1980s economic policies. They are now the country’s second party by some distance, whether we care to admit this or not. Labour tried to pretend that Scotland’s “unionist” vote was a progressive vote for an inclusive Britain, but they’ve been proved dead wrong. It’s increasingly a right-wing vote, it’s looking for revenge and it’s going Tory.

Meanwhile, in England, the Tories are unopposed and unassailable. If Britain somehow remains intact, they could rule in perpetuity. But at what cost? Even if they can destroy or appease the Irish and Scottish fronts in their culture war, they’ll rule a shell of a state. What will bind the country together? Foreign wars are unpopular, the welfare state has been dismantled, devolved institutions are treated with contempt and the monarchy is set for a Prince Charles makeover. It’s also difficult to think of a mainstream British institution than hasn’t been embroiled in a paedophilia scandal or some similar disgrace.

The capitalist elites who control our economy and finance the Tory Party are primarily attracted to London as a global city destination. These people – the real rulers of Britain – must be wondering what on earth happened.

So far, Britain’s economy hasn’t collapsed, certainly not compared to the disastrous Osborne era. But the UK Government hasn’t even begun the planning for its war on three fronts. So far, the whole thing is only a thought experiment.

Once it begins in earnest, the potential costs are almost impossible to calculate. Since the hedge-fund managers of London throw money at the Tory Party to provide a stable culture for undeserved private profit, they really ought to be asking for a refund. Why risk everything for such intangible gains?

From a British Unionist standpoint, the tragedy is that none of this needed to happen. Brexit itself didn’t cause this. It’s not so much Brexit in principle, it is the unplanned Brexit managed by a one party state, by a party that sees no limits to the cheapening of political debate, by leaders who happily put short-term electoral gains over anything, even the grander interests of their big business paymasters.

Britain might have a future. But if it does, it’s a perfectly miserable, divided future where expensively educated fools vigorously compete to lower the bar of dignified, humane and intelligent speech. It’s a future where minority nations are jeered, where alternative customs are spat on, where the meanest sentiments are cheered to the rafters by a parliament of bullies.

Meanwhile, inequality rockets upwards, the planet burns and millions of jobs are lost to automation. We’re still living through a global crisis of capitalism, and there’s no end in sight. Sadly, the only answer Britain has left is, “Oh these bloody immigrants”.