NIGEL Farage’s new party has an MSP in the Scots Parliament. This was done without campaigning or raising a single vote. How? Anyone can do it, apparently. All it takes is for an already elected MSP to join your new party. Simples. Farage’s new MSP is now also their “leader” in Scotland.

In most democracies this would be a constitutional obscenity, of course. So, the rules do need tightening.

As The National points out; “Michelle Ballantyne (for it is she) was not elected to the new leadership, merely appointed by Farage, but then she was not directly elected to the Holyrood Parliament either, as she only got the job because fellow Tory Rachael Hamilton resigned her position as a list MSP to fight the Ettrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire Scottish Parliamentary by-election in June 2017.

“And that seat was only available to Hamilton because John Lamont resigned to fight the Westminster seat of Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk in the General Election.

“Hamilton having actually won a seat, Ballantyne was next on the list of Tories chosen before the 2016 Holyrood elections.”

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You can judge Ballantyne’s vague connection to real life from this quote: “People on benefits cannot have as many children as they like while people who work and pay their way and don’t claim benefits have to make decisions about the number of children they can have.”

Unabashed by general condemnation of her vapourings, she ran for leadership of the Scottish Tories, rightly judging this to be a very shallow pool. To no one’s surprise, she was resoundingly defeated by Carson Slackjaw (I may have this name wrong, because it is hard to keep track when the incumbents change so rapidly, but he, in turn, has now returned to obscurity). She then quit the Tories in November last year.

Observers of Scottish politics have suggested there is trouble ahead for the main right-wing party. The emergence of Farage’s Reform UK party and George Galloway’s Alliance4Unity grouping confirm this suspicion. When I interviewed Councillor Linda Holt, who is standing as a candidate for Alliance4unity on the TNT show some months ago, I put it to her that new right-wing parties would inevitably split the Unionist vote and in particular damage the Scottish Tories. Her response was that the Tories “should get in line”. While this is unlikely, there is no question that it portends big trouble ahead for mainstream Unionist parties.

Right now, U nionist parties and their supporters are fighting a rear-guard battle against the Scottish Government, hoping to limit the size of a future SNP majority at Holyrood while also aiming to reduce the margin of the Yes vote in any referendum.

Crucially, the Tory brand is wholly identified with its leadership. Most Scots have a very low opinion of the prime minister, and this shows no sign of improvement. They see him as someone for whom the term “terminological inexactitude” was coined.

Ironically, UK polls show that British voters still prefer the Tories to Labour. Of course, this may be simply a reflection of the galloping inconsistencies shown by the Labour leader. Nonetheless these polls do point up the growing gap north and south of the border. This is unsustainable.

The Unionist arguments increasingly border on the incoherent with some commentators reduced to proposing that, while Brexit is just awful and the Tory leader, Boris Johnson, is unspeakably bad, nonetheless this growing calamity, with a death toll of thousands, is preferable to constitutional change.

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Such arguments invariably rest on denying the democratic right of the Scottish people to decide their own future; and are political suicide. If this line is pursued, it may render the Scottish Tories to the fate of Scottish Labour. We could see the main right-wing party in Scotland experiencing a PELE – a Political Extinction Level Event. In other words, we may see a re-casting of political attitudes in Scotland that so diminishes support for a Union represented by fractured parties, it renders them all irrelevant in political terms. They will likely retain a diminished core support, but it may be inconsequential in voting terms. Recent polling confirms this analysis.

The emergence of reactionary parties in Scotland proposing abolition of devolution and greater centralisation of the British state, place the Scottish Tories in an awkward position.

Always an uneasy combination of British sentimentalists, “home-rule” Conservatives and empire loyalists, they are now under real pressure. Their choices are unappealing. Do they move rightwards to secure their base, and further alienate Scots? Or seek to respond to the wishes of the electorate by reaching out to middle-of-the-road, indy-sceptic voters, and thus be defenestrated by their London masters? We watch with interest.

Child campaigner, Sue Palmer, is the guest on the TNT show on Wednesday