BEYOND the continuing challenge from Scotland, there are three dangers for the Tories in this General Election election and therefore a triple opportunity for the rest of us. The first of these the Tories will probably stage-manage to a minimum. The second would be a medium-sized risk for them and it could scupper their assumption that a big majority is theirs for the taking. The third, however, is the really serious one.

The first risk is that Theresa May will be allowed to meet real people or even real journalists during this campaign. The Prime Minister’s uncertainty makes Gordon Brown look like a man of the people and a quick-witted tribune of democratic accountability. Not only have the TV debates been junked with only a low-level protest from the broadcasters, the Tories have also succeeded thus far in keeping the Prime Minister out of view of real people and hard political questioning.

The contrast on the one hand between Theresa May’s visit to a hall in Banchory with the Tory faithful crammed in pretending to be attendees at a kiddies’ party and on the other Nicola Sturgeon meeting all comers at a mobbed May Day event in Turriff on Monday is a very telling one.

One showed a First Minister confident of her campaigning presence. The other showed a Prime Minister whose handlers have no confidence whatsoever in her campaigning ability. There should be a full-scale journalistic revolt against this degree of closed stage-management. It is an affront to democracy but the Tory high command are confident they can get away with it.

The second risk for the Tories is that the attempt to force a single-issue election of Brexit and leadership is rejected by the electorate. Instead, the people might have the effrontery to exercise their right to talk about other things. There was certainly some evidence of this last weekend as I spent a good deal of time on doorsteps talking about Motability vehicle cuts, the WASPI women and the disgraceful rape clause.

As the election broadens, then the Tory grip on it weakens.

By any stretch of the imagination, the Government’s record is deplorable. Even the much vaunted post-Brexit boom (or as it should be called the reverse Osborne effect) is beginning to look suspect. Plunging industrial production and retail sales figures have now been followed by confirmation in the first quarter UK growth estimates. The Tories have gone running to the country while the economic going was still looking good.

On everything else there is no case whatsoever for Tory re-election. “Nobody doubts,” said Dr Peter Bennie, chair of the BMA, in February, “that currently Scotland’s NHS is in relatively better shape than south of the Border.”

No-one that is but the tartan trolls of the Unionist press who attempt to cast doubt on that statement of obvious fact every day. But the people who have to live with a collapsing health service in England are not fooled. They know the reality and therefore the greater salience these issues come to have in this election, then so the Tory lead will shrink.

Such is Labour’s weakness even this probably won’t be enough to stop the Tories winning big in England. Nonetheless it could place some of the wilder estimates of Tory victories beyond their reach.

However, there is something which could derail the Tories entirely and that is if their election raison d’etre is under serious question: if people realise fully that this unwanted election has been sold on one big whopper.

That could happen if there were to be moves to indict a clutch of Tory candidates during the campaign on the expenses fallout of their last campaign. Such an eventuality would totally undercut May’s claim to be acting in the national interest and demonstrate instead that this is a poll called to promote Tory self-interest and to protect them from the consequences of their own dodgy dealings.

That would be dramatic but is in the lap of the gods – or more accurately in the lap of the Crown Prosecution Service.

However, there is another way that the Tories could be made to eat humble pie and that is if there are more revelations such as the fallout from last week’s dinner with the European leaders. It wouldn’t take that much for the Downing Street dinner to become May’s political last supper.

The accounts have the ring of truth and the non-denial denials from Downing Street confirm them.

Their importance is fundamental.

The reports suggest that it is not the lady but the EU 27 who are not for turning. They leave the prospect of no Brexit deal very real indeed. They suggest that the May/Davis combination has only the loosest grasp of the realities of having a defined relationship with the single marketplace and why that would necessarily involve an enforcement mechanism through an international court.

They suggest, in brief, that as far as negotiations are concerned, it is all over even before the shouting with all the consequences that will flow for real investment, real jobs and real people.

If this is anywhere close to the mark then it exposes the hollow sham at the heart of this election.

It means that May is seeking a mandate to negotiate the impossible.

The press south of the Border will do their best to minimise these revelations. The Tory press will even try to use the European bogeymen as a reason for voting Tory, even if it inevitably means a Theresa Mayhem.

However, there is at least a chance that the people realise they are being taken for a ride. If they cotton on, then the fallout might really puncture the Tory election balloon.