TWO of Holyrood’s most excruciating moments occurred in May last year on swearing-in day for the newly elected MSPs. Only with great difficulty could you determine which was most cringe-worthy. Ken Macintosh, the new Presiding Officer, had barely had time to decide what to do with his £45k-a-year pay rise before announcing solemnly: “I want to take some of the hostility and sting and theatrics out of First Minister’s Questions.”

Not long afterwards, Ross Greer, the then 21-year-old Green MSP, gave a clenched-fist salute. This was an admirably defiant gesture about a state that gave him an education at one of the top schools in the country followed by a £60k-a-year job. After a great deal of deliberation I’d say that while Greer’s gang-hut gesture was pathetic, Macintosh’s plea for a quiet life made me feel queasy.

Thus we had a Labour politician calling for politics without passion in a week when it was announced that none of the senior executives at RBS who helped crash the UK economy was to be prosecuted and that the Wood Group, established by Scotland’s richest man, was about to make thousands of loyal employees redundant. And just to round off another week in “fair and equal Scotland”, it had been revealed a number of senior executives at NHS 24, where a delayed IT project resulted in an overspend of £50 million walked away with pay-offs totalling the thick end of 350 grand as their reward.

All of those who stood to gain most from these decisions would all have supported Mr Macintosh’s call for “the hostility and sting” to be taken out of politics.

Here’s another list of those who would prefer that Scottish politicians and voters didn’t make too much noise and stopped getting angry about stuff: the 500 people who own half of Scotland; bosses of firms who refuse to pay a decent wage to their employees; dodgy property magnates who exploit the financial vulnerability of poor people; politicians belonging to a party which reduces benefits for sick, elderly and vulnerable people while awarding tax breaks for its own supporters in the UK’s most affluent regions, aka the entire Scottish Conservative group at Holyrood.

These groups thrive when the rest of us are looking the other way; they sleep a little easier at night knowing that even politicians from apparently left-wing parties in the UK are telling their colleagues to keep their voices down and not get too upset.

Has anyone ever observed the debating chamber at Holyrood in all of its somnambulant splendour? I’ve witnessed more passion in a care home when it’s Midsomer Murders night on the telly. Yet hardly a week goes by without more reminders that we still live in a deeply unequal and unfair society, no matter how many times our politicians claim that Scotland is the fairest and most equal wee country in the world.

Yesterday it was revealed that drug-related deaths have increased by more than 20 per cent in a year. Last week, we discovered that on current trends Scotland is facing a homelessness crisis over the next 20 years. The previous week we learned that the Scottish Government’s flagship mental health strategy is in tatters, mainly as a result of local authorities viewing this sector as an acceptable target for cost-cutting.

There is a reason why pro-UK activists in the Conservatives and their patsies in the Scottish Labour Party, having had a couple of years to think about it, have all decided that they don’t want a second referendum on independence.

The ruling elites, you see, all over the world become distinctly uncomfortable when the masses act with one voice. When this happens regimes tend to fall and nasty things like revolutions have a habit of breaking out. Kings and princes topple and are replaced with governments by the people for the people. Sometimes, after centuries of violent conquest and slavery to subdue indigenous peoples, a degree of unpleasantness is required to remove the perpetrators from their positions of absolute power. Unfortunately, this has never happened in Britain but Scotland came mighty close to a revolution when more than 1.6 million of us voted Yes in the 2014 referendum.

So you can see why those who have benefited most from the inequality that exists in Britain are not very enthusiastic about the prospect of another referendum and why they insist on advancing the lie that the first one was a nasty business that divided the country. Of course it divided the country; that was the whole point of it. And if you’re a left-wing politician you should be doing your best to divide the country too. Division, mayhem and chaos have been the lot of the poor, the needy and the most vulnerable in this country for more than half a millennium. Only by sowing division, mayhem and chaos will they be able to reap power. And by power I don’t mean the acquiescent and nodding goodwill gestures of what passed for a Labour Party pre-Jeremy Corbyn.

Unlike some of my more civilised and polite fellow travellers in the wider Yes movement, I’ve been thrilled at all the harsh words and beastliness that has erupted among certain nationalist groups and individuals. The next referendum will be the last in our lifetimes. And if I’m being selfish here I’d sincerely like to have another pop at it before the President of North Korea and the Pennsylvania Avenue Bam send us all to meet our maker (and yes, in the interests of diversity, other fates may be available). When that referendum happens, the message must be right and the strategy waterproof. If it takes another year of handbags at 50 paces and a few meaty and foul-mouthed exchanges on Twitter, so be it. The pro-UK forces are gleeful that all the sound and fury signals the disintegration of the Yes movement. I, on the other hand, think it shows that three years after defeat in the first referendum there is still passion and spunk in the movement. People still care and they’re still angry. Hold on to that anger and heed not the whispering voices calling for calm and good behaviour.

Without passion and fury the Yes movement is nothing. We can all be calm and well-behaved when 250,000 Scottish children are pulled out of poverty and the hard-right government of the UK is but a distant and unpleasant memory. Until then, bring it on and, ahem … Tongs ya bas.