WHILE the Scottish independence movement gets on with its regular summer activity of falling out with itself – something which has occurred over so many previous summers that it’s now become something of a hoary tradition – the Conservatives are quietly getting on being trapped in the headlights of the UK’s existential crisis.

They have no answer to the growth in support for independence other than saying no to a Section 30 order and hoping that it will all go away.

According to press reports, the rise in support for independence has sparked deep worry in Westminster. Michael Gove was said to be in panic mode about the Union, and Boris is in “irritated mode”.

Meanwhile the political editor of the Conservative magazine The Spectator reported that a senior figure in the 2014 Better Together campaign believes the independence horse has already bolted.

Attempts to roll back devolution will only boost support for independence in Scotland, and Brexit and the dire response of the British Government have only succeeded in alienating Scotland even further.

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Yet the Conservative vision of post-Brexit Britain is one which requires further centralisation and a greater concentration of power in Westminster. All the while in the background is the knowledge that a large part of Conservative support in England would cheerfully get rid of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Tories know all this. They just don’t know what to do about it.

It was announced that our part-time Prime Minister is to embark upon a tour of the UK in order to persuade the natives of the benefits of the Preciousssss Union™.

This could be the ideal time for the Scottish Government to close the Scottish-English border on health grounds, if for no other reason than to show Johnson that it does actually exist.

It would also have the definite health benefit of protecting the nation from raised blood pressure and the explosive throwing of objects at TV screens as Johnson snorts, fnaughs, and bumbles his way through a series of self-serving lies about Scotland.

We all know the drill by now. Johnson will tick off the boxes on his British nationalist bingo card with a few carefully stage-managed visits to businesses owned by Conservative supporters, a fishing boat, a distillery, and a photo-op with a barnyard animal which may or may not also be a list MSP for the Scottish Conservatives.

He is also quite likely to visit a fish market or fish processing factory. These tend to be refrigerated, which will save him the bother of finding a fridge to hide in. The number of ordinary Scottish people that he will engage with in the wild, so to speak, will be precisely zero. This is not unconnected with the fact that the Prime Minister’s handlers fear that ordinary Scottish people could get pretty wild indeed if they’re allowed to express their views about the British Government close up and personally to Boris Johnson.

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The entire exercise will do nothing except to generate a few photos for the Conservative press and the broadcast media, allowing the Prime Minister to look as though he’s “doing something” about the parlous state of the Preciousssss Union™ without actually doing anything about it at all. This is what counts as taking Scotland’s views into account in this supposedly United Kingdom.

The truth is the Conservatives have no idea how to counter the rise in support for independence. They are instinctively centralising, and worship the supreme sovereignty of Westminster as a fetish.

Yet the only remotely plausible solutions to the long term crisis of governance in the multi-national entity known as the UK is for there to be a serious and radical decentralisation, and a demotion of Westminster. This is as much anathema to the Tories as the destruction of the devolution settlement is to Scotland.

The sole strategy that the Conservatives have for avoiding independence is to refuse to co-operate with a demand from the Scottish Government for a Section 30 order for another referendum. This isn’t a serious political strategy, it’s merely a short-term tactic.

Although there are many in the independence movement who fear a refusal from Westminster and are frustrated and angry at the lack of a definite plan to progress independence in the face of a refusal, Boris Johnson saying no to a Section 30 order following the re-election of a majority SNP Government in a Scottish Parliament with a majority of pro-independence MSPs would in fact deliver a massive political boost to the cause of independence. It would only succeed in making people in this country draw an equivalence between independence and democracy itself.

It would represent a defining moment for both the independence movement and for the UK.

A Scotland which is told that it’s not allowed to hold another referendum, even if this is the clearly expressed wish of a majority of its voters, is a Scotland where there is no longer the sovereign right of the Scottish people to choose the form of government best suited to their needs.

A Scotland where self-determination is vetoed by a Prime Minister whose party Scotland rejected at the ballot box does not possess self-determination within the UK. At a stroke, British nationalists in Scotland would lose one of their most cherished arguments, the argument that Scotland’s membership of the UK is voluntary.

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The real problem for the Tories is that their sole weapon for delaying a referendum, refusing a Section 30 order, will only boost support for independence. It would demonstrate to voters in Scotland that we can only enjoy democracy if we are an independent country.

Yet the Tories also know that if they attempt to give themselves a fig leaf of democratic legitimacy by campaigning against another referendum in next year’s Holyrood elections, then demands from a re-elected majority SNP Government for another referendum will be politically impossible to defend.

There are those in the party who advise trying to avoid the constitutional issue entirely during the campaign, yet that would leave the Scottish Tories without their key policy – their only policy many would say – and a deeply uncharismatic leader trying to sell the Scottish electorate Conservative economic and social policies which we can all see are a disaster in England. It would only make the defeat already predicted by the polls even worse than it’s likely to be if they do campaign on refusing another referendum.