CAN we live in a grown-up country please? There are many reasons why this newspaper and yours truly support Scottish independence. It’s because we believe that the path that Scotland takes should be decided by the people of Scotland. It’s because we believe that Scotland’s resources should be harnessed to improve the lot of the people of Scotland.

It’s because we believe that a country is best governed by people who are actually bothered enough about it to live in it. There are many more reasons, but Brexit has taught us another.

One of the most important lessons of Brexit is that the UK is governed by intellectual pygmies, people who appear psychologically and emotionally ill-equipped to deal with the realities of the UK as a medium-sized European state and who have temper tantrums because they can’t have their Brexit cake and eat it.

The lesson is clear, if Scotland wants a government of grown ups, of a political class who have a realistic view of Scotland’s place in the world, we’re only going to get it with independence.

One of the abiding tropes of opponents of Scottish independence is that Scotland is too parochial. We’re told that we are just a wee country with wee concerns, not really suited to the adult business of running a proper grown-up state. This is why Reporting Scotlandshire traditionally prefers to concentrate on murrdurrs, the fitba, and wee cute kittens. Those are the topics which are appropriate for a minor province of a Great Britain, a minor province that shouldn’t get above itself.

What Brexit has taught us however is that the only grown-ups in the UK political room are the SNP and the Scottish Government. They’re the only party in any of this sorry mess that has a clear and principled stand, which knows what it’s doing, and is displaying anything that even remotely approaches competence.

The supposed big boys and girls of British politics have instead decided that what is truly vital at this hour of an existential crisis for the British state is to play silly and petty games with one another. We don’t have real politics in the UK, we have yah boo suckery with a Union fleg.

It has never been clearer that when supporters of the British state call Scottish independence parochial, they are in fact indulging in psychological projection. The really parochial ones are those inside the Westminster bubble. Just look at the topics which have dominated the news headlines over the past few weeks.

In years to come psychologists will write textbooks about the emotional and psychological effects of the decline of a once great empire, and they will devote chapters to the displacement activities of the British establishment as they desperately try to avoid dealing with the reality that the UK isn’t as remotely as important or powerful as the great power of their Empire 2.0 dreams.

Instead of dealing with the real issues facing the UK, the British political class and the British media have of late preferred to focus instead on what Jeremy Corbyn did or did not mutter at a stupid person behaving stupidly.

This has taken over from anguished discussion about whether Jean Claude Juncker did or did not call that same stupid Prime Minister “nebulous”. That in turn took over from a debate about whether the stupid and nebulous Prime Minister should have an entirely pointless and meaningless TV debate with the equally stupid and nebulous leader of the party that likes to think it’s the opposition.

The main political story however has been the stupid and nebulous Prime Minister’s stupid and nebulous denial of the reality that her Brexit deal has as much chance of getting the support of a majority in the House of Commons as there is of Jeremy Corbyn having a realistic alternative.

You have to hand it to the British establishment though. They’ve managed to make Jackie Bird doing her concerned face as she presents the ideal Reporting Scotland news story – about how a one eyed cat got scared by a murrdurr and now it’s stuck up a tree in Uplawmoor and is disrupting the local fitba match – seem like an hour-long exposition of Nobel-prize winning particle physicists explaining the fundamental structure of the universe, with or without cat gifs. The real political infants are the leadership of the two main UK political parties.

Scotland deserves a government of grown ups. It deserves a government that listens to its concerns, which responds to its needs and interests, and which acts on them in a responsible and adult manner.

There’s only one way that’s going to happen, and it sure as hell won’t happen by meekly and silently following the British political establishment off the Brexit cliff.

If the grown-up people of Scotland want a government of grown-ups, we’ll only get it with independence.