IT was a week for brass necks and blowtorches. Some newspaper editors and their favoured columnists were out parading a thesis so strident in its self-assurance and so tangled in its contradictions that the word “cant” fulminated from my lips.

There was a mood in the air, heavy with hypocrisy, which huffily argued that talk of independence was somehow a betrayal of the spirit of lockdown.

Try as I might, I have not found the Covid-19 rule that says we have to put our brains in the freezer and disengage from democratic thought.

I am at home, dutifully obeying the rules of isolation, the mores of self-distancing and the limitations of daily exercise, but who said we had to stop thinking of a different kind of society in the future? I must have missed that on the slate of emergency regulations.

When it comes to the future and musings about the so-called “new normal”, I find myself in agreement with comedian Frankie Boyle when he said: “There is no normal for us to go back to. People sleeping in the streets wasn’t normal; children living in poverty wasn’t normal; neither was our taxes helping to bomb the people of Yemen. We need to make something better in Scotland.”

If this is not a time to reflect on how we are governed and how we might face up to future challenges, then when might that precious moment come?

This week almost every daily newspaper carried some glib statement limiting what we can think. Unsurprisingly the one thing they almost universally agreed on is that talk of independence should be postponed and, if it ever returns, it will be on some unspecified day in the far-off future.

To repeat a tired cantata – the time is not now.

Alex Massie, the thoughtful muse of the Unionist press well known for his elegant circumlocutions, delivered a masterclass last week. “The way in which our politicians talk about the United Kingdom is changing and doing so in ways that point to, and allow, a more relaxed, expansive Unionism.”

On the surface it sounds vaguely radical, but it is not. What Alex usually means is that he is struggling to defend the deficiencies of the this rank rotten Conservative Government, so alas Unionism will have to be more ‘‘relaxed’’. It’s not quite clear how – maybe by polishing Trident with Brasso once a month.

Ironically, it was one of the bastions of the British Union, The Sunday Times, that broke ranks. Last weekend’s scorching attack on the Conservative Government and their woeful handling of the first five weeks of the pandemic came as a shock to the guardians of the Union. You could almost hear the nervous rustling as some journalists north of the Border twitched uncomfortably, wondering whether they too were expected to turn their guns on the Cabinet.

The failures so far are manifest: a slowness to shut down the country, an unwillingness to lean on the ‘‘broad shoulders’’ of the German state, who had a plan in place, clear leadership and emergency equipment supplies. Finally there was their lax attitude to procurement, which left care homes and frontline staff vulnerable to infection.

Another argument fondly put up by Unionists is that we should not be making comparisons with death rates across the UK. Why not? There is much to be learnt from data journalism.

We can now be certain that older people are dying at much higher rates than the young; that minority ethnic citizens, specially those on the frontline, are dying at rates higher than the indigenous white population; and that the poor are at greater risk of infection than the wealthy. If we know those things why is there such shyness about comparing death rates in Scotland and England?

Last week The Courier published a fascinating data analysis of the East of Scotland, comparing and contrasting rates of infection in Dundee and Fife, but lo and behold anyone crass enough to compare rates of death in England is beyond the pale.

In refusing to countenance cross-Border comparisons, many have leapt to the facile argument that England is more “built-up” and so it is the concentration of population that explains the death rates.

That may explain London and Birmingham, but not Cumbria, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Cornwall, where rates are running higher than equivalent communities in Scotland.

By comparison with Scotland, the National Health Service in England has been brutalised by privatisation. It has a trust system that is not fit for purpose and its governing ideology looks to an American healthcare system geared towards profiteering.

Mistakes have unquestionably been made in Scotland, and most certainly within the care system, but the underlying data shows the virus has been more professionally managed north of the Border.

A different order of preparation is highlighted by the existence of an emergency hospital at Glasgow’s SEC, named after the pioneering Maryhill nurse Louisa Jordan, who died in service in the First World War.

Although it is already on standby and may not even open, the ‘‘SNP Bad’’ brigade are already looking for “white elephants” by the Clyde and preparing their waste-of-money diatribes.

You could not mark their necks with a blowtorch.

One columnist who often mystifies me is The New Statesman’s Chris Deerin, a man I have some genuine respect for, if only because he is in the same band as Bobby Bluebell.

Last week he wrote: “In a new era of uncertainty and risk, a return to the old arguments for separation is no longer possible. There is no fresh polling to tell us where the public now stands on independence, in part because our newspapers are fighting for their existence and don’t have the cash for costly surveys. And, anyway, only the most diehard will be worrying about future constitutional arrangements rather than their job, their kids’ schooling and their granny’s survival.”

It’s spectacular hokum. We do not know where the public stands on independence. A succession of polls earlier in the year suggested at very least a narrowing of opinion, if not a slight lean towards self-governance.

According to Chris Deerin, one of the reasons we are not more up to date is that the London-based papers – most owned by tax-resistant billionaires who universally dislike independence – are in such a parlous state that they cannot afford polls.

This week Denmark and Poland both announced there will be no financial support and no bailouts for companies registered in tax havens. I assume this entirely understandable practice will be rolled out to include the suite of companies owned by Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch. It is Deerin’s last point that baffles me – he seems to be suggesting that we cannot hold diferent thoughts in our minds at any one time and so have been reduced to mental incapacity by a virus that hitherto supposedly attacked the lungs.

Now it seems we are incapable of balancing our various feelings – concern, anxiety, isolation, love for our dearest and rage at political incompetence.

The obvious point of difference that many columnists shrink from is that the virus has shown us two different forms of leadership – one lazy, self-obsessed and, according to the Sunday Times, “asleep at the wheel” and the other efficient, concise and taking a no-nonsense approach to public health. The first is embodied in the personality of Boris Johnson and the other in the formidable dedication of Nicola Sturgeon.

In the distant salons of London some commentators have noticed this underlying narrative. Last week in an article headlined “Don’t be surprised if Britons look beyond No 10 for leadership”, The Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff argued that the failures of leadership at Westminster may trigger even greater changes than wearing a face mask to the supermarket.

I know we are not allowed to say this when we should be baking banana bread – but bring it on.