EACH week, it seems another reason to opt for an independent Scotland materialises.

The Great Brexit Shambles alone provides compelling evidence that the end of the United Kingdom as we know it is nigh. You can take your pick: special status for Northern Ireland to avoid a hard border; the crippling future cost of moving goods across Europe; the wholesale dismissal of Holyrood’s sovereignty; the hostile environment for immigrants that Scotland needs to grow its economy; the disappearance of jobs along with European agencies previously headquartered here; the cost of replacing and staffing services previously undertaken by Brussels.

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And if little of that whets your appetite then there are the daily reminders of the agenda of the Tory Gang of Four privateers who are driving the mayhem. Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to recreate Trafalgar, the Napoleonic Wars and the corrupt kingdom run by the East India Company in the 18th century. This rested on plundering the natural resources of Africa, Asia and South America and enslaving their indigenous populations to provide an easy way to enrich the UK aristocracy. If any of them attempted to resist then they could rely on multitudes of British poor to act as cannon fodder in the delusion that they were fighting for a good king and the British way of life.

Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Liam Fox, meanwhile, have all more or less admitted that the Brexit wheeze was merely a convenient way of getting rid of David Cameron and advancing their own political careers in the process. Each of them, of course, has access to the sort of money that will inoculate them from the consequences of Brexit. The pattern of ownership and shareholdings many of their supporters possess in companies that profit from opportunities in so-called enemy territory gives us an indication of their true loyalties and what motivates them most. The speculation in Russia of companies associated with Rees-Mogg is a wretched example of this shameless cynicism.

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Occasionally, though, other impending future events come to light that make you hope Yes strategists in the next referendum campaign are paying attention. The National reported yesterday that Labour’s George Foulkes is proposing to turn the Palace of Westminster into a luxury apartment development. His Lordship is apparently concerned with the future cost of refurbishing the UK parliament and feels his suggestion is a much more cost-efficient alternative. In February, MPs voted to leave parliament seven years from now for a period of six years. This would allow a multi-billion pound refurbishment which is estimated to cost anything between £3.5 billion and £5.7bn.

Thus, even if you leave aside all the other arguments for Scotland determining its own fate, three massive cost implications of remaining in the Union are now all sitting prettily in a row: the continuing annual £2bn cost of maintaining weapons of mass destruction; the yet-to-be-finalised fiscal apocalypse wrought by Brexit (let’s open the bidding at £100bn) and now the multi-billion-pound refit of the ancient and obsolete centre of British power and influence.

Of course, the disquiet of Baron Foulkes of, ahem … Cumnock might carry a little more weight if they weren’t coming from someone who, by 2025, will have spent almost his entire adult life participating in the Westminster bacchanal at our expense. (I’ve often wondered how the good citizens of places such as Cumnock, Port Ellen and Craigielea feel about their communities being associated with unelected privilege and mediaeval patronage by assorted Labour royalty). I’m not suggesting for a minute that Labour’s irascible Red Baron hasn’t worked hard for his constituents at Westminster but nor is he exactly a stranger to its apres-ski delights.

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Neither am I wholly convinced by his favoured alternative use of the Palace of Westminster. Luxury apartment flats? Is that really the best that a tribune of the party of the people can produce (even one clad in a red fur coat such as he)? I reckon that the cost of a luxury apartment in the former Palace of Westminster would start at around £20 million. As such, they would become just another uninhabited property on the portfolio of shadowy money-launderers, international Mob bosses and the common-or-garden tax-avoiders. These are the ones who contribute each year to the upkeep of the Conservative and Unionist party for the purpose of ensuring that it doesn’t scrutinise their activities unduly. Isn’t Lord Foulkes aware of the crisis in social and affordable housing caused by the greed and corruption associated with this sort of property boom in London?

I much prefer Pete Wishart’s suggestion. The SNP member for Perth and North Perthshire has proposed that the Houses of Parliament simply become tourist attractions. This has much to commend it. A guided tour of the museum of Westminster would be a major attraction and a real eye-opener if conducted in an authentic and meaningful manner.

As an appetiser I’d be tempted to begin the tour with a promenade through the myriad bars and drinking dens of Westminster which have played host to the antics of generations of our public servants as they got howling on beer subsidised by us.

And look, here is the public gallery, usually referred to as the Strangers’ Gallery and so-called because it adequately describes the relationship of most MPs to the sort of people who sit in it. And here’s the Press Gallery where generations of political journalists have got together to ensure that the pre-agreed line is conveyed and one that won’t scare the horses.

And there’s the vast dining room where Britain’s corporate elite daily meet with MPs to bribe them into passing legislation favourable to their commercial interests, sorry: seek to persuade them always to do the right thing in the interests of the majority of the voters who put them there.

Over here is the statue of Margaret Thatcher who destroyed Britain’s heavy industries and sacrificed British soldiers in defending a tiny island, of which most were blissfully unaware, just in time for a General Election.

And this was where 418 Labour MPs sat in 1997 and duly spent most of the next decade betraying their supporters by failing to repair the damage Thatcher caused in the communities who had chiefly entrusted them with their votes.

And there at last is where the British Conservatives sat, including their Scottish colleagues in the infant section, when they walked over the sovereign will of the Scottish Parliament in the course of the EU Withdrawal Bill.

And if by 2025 the Scottish people have continued to opt for remaining a part of this perhaps they could be represented in the Strangers’ Gallery by three wise monkeys made of straw.