IT’S going to be a torrid week in Scottish politics as the Salmond-Sturgeon fall-out, which has consumed the anti-independence press, the British nationalist parties and sections of the independence movement, finally reaches its climax. This week we are due to see the publication of the nakedly political Holyrood committee report – a report written by a committee whose opposition members had already convicted Nicola Sturgeon before she had uttered a single word of her marathon evidence session.

We will also see a Conservative attempt to unseat the First Minister through a motion of no confidence.

We have already seen the publication of an independent investigation by the QC James Hamilton. He found that Nicola Sturgeon did not break the ministerial code.

The First Minister was confident of such a ruling and will survive in post. Hopefully now we can finally start to put this unedifying episode behind us and move on with the serious business of preparing for another independence referendum.

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We can expect to see headlines all week attacking the First Minister and the Scottish Government. We can also expect to see Ruth Davidson popping up on our TV screens to pontificate about integrity, even though getting Ruth Davidson to denounce another politician’s supposed lack of integrity is like asking the Kardashians to denounce fake tans, botox and plastic surgery.

Ruth wouldn’t recognise integrity if it was one of those gutted fish she’s fond of posing with in a cheeky photo op came to life and slapped her in the face. Although Ruth is markedly less fond of posing for cheeky photo ops with seafood these days now that the fishing industry has realised that her party has sold it out and betrayed its promises.

Integrity is a fish that has always evaded the Tories’ nets. Likewise you’ll search in vain for Ruth’s media appearances condemning the many and varied breaches of the ministerial code committed by UK Cabinet ministers. She’s not too keen on popping up on our TV screen to preach to us about integrity in public office when it comes to the frequent lies uttered by her boss Boris Johnson.

For Ruth and the opposition parties this episode has nothing to do with maintaining or improving the standards of Scottish Government and everything to do with deposing Nicola Sturgeon just a few weeks away from a crucial Scottish election, which could signal the death knell for the so-called precious union. Forcing Nicola Sturgeon into resignation represents their best chance of derailing the independence movement without having to trouble themselves with coming up with a convincing repair plan for a British ship of state which is holed below the water line.

The spectacular breakdown of the relationship between Nicola Sturgeon an Alex Salmond represents all their SNP-bad Christmases come at once, and they are determined to milk it of every last drop of performative outrage. After all it’s not like any of them have a positive or convincing plan of their own to put to the Scottish people. Essentially their pitch to the people of Scotland in this election is, “We know we’re rubbish, but look how bad the SNP is.”

All that Labour has on the table is a fantasy of possible future discussions about a vague and ill-defined federalism. It’s a plan which is not do much on the table as on a table that has yet to be built because the timber it is to be made from is currently a very sickly seedling in a drought-stricken forest.

Even that is vastly better than anything the Conservatives have on offer. The Tories really don’t want to talk about their plans to eviscerate the Scottish Parliament and to hollow out the devolution settlement from within. Plans for which they have never received anything approaching a mandate from the Scottish electorate.

The Scottish Conservatives don’t even bother to articulate a positive argument for why anyone should vote for them in their election materials, which focus exclusively on depriving the SNP of an outright majority and opposing another independence referendum. The Conservatives don’t want to spell out what they have in mind for the Scottish Parliament and the devolution settlement because they know that it is massively unpopular with the people of Scotland. The overwhelmingly anti-independence media in Scotland don’t care to press them on it as that might increase support for independence, and that would never do.

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IRRESPECTIVE of what happens in Holyrood this week, for all the drama and the headlines, fundamentally it will do nothing to alter the underlying dynamic which is inexorably driving Scotland towards independence. No matter what the outcome of the inquiries into what Nicola Sturgeon did or didn’t know and when she found out about it, it doesn’t alter the fact that the real motor of Scottish independence is a British state which is unable and unwilling to accommodate the democratic will of the people of Scotland.

There is an essential contradiction at the very heart of the British state. It’s a union which wants to behave like a unitary state, it’s a polity which is incapable of coming up with mechanisms which protect its smaller constituent nations from decisions made by the largest part which have a negative impact on them. And above all it is unwilling to wean itself off the drug of an unwritten constitution and an unfair electoral system which grants crushing majorities and almost unchecked power to the leader of the largest political party even though that party secures less than 50% of the popular vote.

None of this will change whether Nicola Sturgeon survives this week or not, even if the Conservatives and their allies succeed in unseating her, that underlying dynamic will soon reassert itself, and the poverty of British nationalist ambitions for Scotland will quickly become exposed, given that they can no longer be camouflaged by manufactured outrage about Sturgeon v Salmond.

Distressing as this episode may be for those of us who dream of independence, the very best that the Conservatives and their allies can hope for is to buy themselves a bit of time before they have to face the inevitable.