LAST week people across the political spectrum (except Ukip) joined to condemn the racist, homophobic and sexist bile directed against Humza Yousaf, Ruth Davidson and Nicola Sturgeon.

The message thundered out loud and clear from friends and foes alike that prejudice and bigotry masquerading as political polemic will not be tolerated in Scottish political life. And about time too, will be the reaction of most reasonable people.

But let’s also look at another phobia that has begun to infest political debate across the UK. Scotophobia – or “Jockophobia” as it was called by London-based, pro-union Scottish journalist Hugo Rifkind.

As Labour and Tory politicians have acknowledged, the portrayal of Nicola Sturgeon in the now infamous doctored Sun photograph was blatantly misogynist. So too was the cartoon in the Daily Mail of Nicola Sturgeon with Ed Miliband in her cleavage, and the opinion column in the same newspaper under the grotesque headline “Ms Bonkers Barnet Flashed Her Majorities”.

But there is another dimension to this abuse that will be uncomfortable for some of our political leaders. The abuse of Nicola Sturgeon is powered in part by a rising tide of contempt towards Scotland, bordering at times on outright hatred, for having had the temerity to question the future of the United Kingdom.

And it’s not just confined to the right-wing press either. A cartoon in The Guardian by the right-on Steve Bell sought to portray Scotland as a nation of of incestuous country dancers. Then we have a more polite version of the same disdain in another upmarket newspaper, The Times, as the normally measured Matthew Parris tells us that “Aggressive Scots Can Take The High Road”, and confesses an “iciness towards the Scots” brought on by the independence referendum and the surging support for the SNP.

And these are the paid professionals of the media. A random trawl through the online comments of the English press reveals an ugly undertone of anti-Scottish venom that is reminiscent of the attitude towards the Irish at the height of the Troubles.

When David Cameron uses Alex Salmond as the bogeyman to discredit Ed Miliband, he is exploiting that ugly vein of bigotry. And when Ed Miliband rules out any prospect of a coalition, he is running scared of it. The same politicians who told us a few months ago that the UK was “an equal partnership of nations” now tell us up in Scotlandshire that we can never be involved in the government of the UK unless we vote for London-controlled political parties.

During the referendum, Yes campaigners were unfairly accused of being anti-English for supporting the equality of nations. Yet the paradox is that Anglophobia, which was for a time in the 1980s and

1990s a force on the fringes of Scottish nationalism, is now dead and buried.

Indeed, if The National or the Sunday Herald were to carry cartoons, headlines and opinion columns expressing such hostile sentiments towards the English nation, all hell would break loose. I’ve heard no anti-English sentiment from those who want independence. But I’ve seen and heard plenty of hate being directed towards “the Scotch”.

Finally, an equal pay victory ... but nine more councils are still to settle

CONGRATULATIONS to all the women who’ve finally won equal pay from North Lanarkshire Council after ten long years.

During the battle, women have died. And still nine councils still haven’t settled. They deserve to be named and shamed, so here goes: Glasgow, Fife, Falkirk, West Lothian, Aberdeenshire, Clackmannnanshire, East Dunbartonshire, South Ayrshire, and Argyll and Bute. Most are Labour-led, though one is led by the SNP and another is a Tory-LibDem coalition.

When the struggle started I was an MSP. I asked questions, moved motions, wrote letters. Although the justice of the equal pay cases was obvious to me, some "progressive" types were more concerned about councils going bankrupt. Some self-proclaimed revolutionaries I knew, who usually liked to call for strikes at any sniff of a dispute, complained about “bourgeois feminism” getting in the way of the class struggle.

Lawyers offering to represent women when their unions refused were tarred as profiteers. Some trade union activists were complicit in signing women up to agreements that sold the women short but kept the council leaders happy.

I’d never known another situation where trade unionists used the employer’s financial difficulties to talk workers into settling for far less than they were due. So, well done to the indomitable Carol Fox and Fox and Partners; Action 4 Equality (Scotland) Ltd; and Unison – who did the right thing in the end.

As for the councils – and any other employer who hasn’t implemented women’s legal right to equal pay – pay up. Now.