The National:

OK, OK. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Don’t keep us in suspense – who is the cunning Yes voter embedded in the Tory camp? Who is the malign genius who keeps selling them strategies ostensibly to let the Scottish people know how especially loved and cherished they are, whilst contriving to get right up their noses. Big time.

I mean think about it. What could possibly go wrong with slapping a union flag on everything that doesn’t move, or, in the case of short stay UK ministers, things that do? Just what the Scottish voter has longed for – rasps from Perthshire and lamb from Angus proudly flying the flag for, er, England.

The labelling wheeze supposedly originated with little Mr Gove, telling the Scottish Tory troops that henceforth the ungrateful Jocks would be given visible evidence at every turn of the UK’s Government’s boundless largesse. Here a bypass, there a duelled road. If the EU could get signage all over the shop when they fund projects, well so they jolly well could too.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson's Union Jackery blitz branded ‘crass’ and ‘desperate’

And not to worry your little heads about the fact that some of that thinly disguised bribery tramples all over the devolution settlement and its irritating clauses about Westminster butting out of anything which is the funding responsibility of the Scottish Parliament. Why by the time we’ve finished, that talking shop will have all the teeth of Tony Blair’s infamous parish council. The one to which he compared the upcoming devolved administration when he thought nobody of any moment was listening. Only some lowlife tartan scribbler.

Anyway, whoever the fifth columnist is … respect! Currently you’re playing a bloody blinder. Bet it was you who thought up the idea of having Dougie Ross go public with what a fine notion independence is. Even if he WAS talking about Pakistan at the time. Good to have on record his views on proud nations doing their own thing their own way.

The National:

READ MORE: Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross reveals his support for independence

And what a corker was that notion of a procession of UK ministers doing a hit and run to remind the locals that poor wee Scotland would be a complete basket case without the strength and wisdom of the London cabinet propping it up.

Utter brilliance too having Priti Patel coming amongst us to remind us all what a sterling and compassionate lot her border control staff are. We may not need a gunboat to hunt down exhausted migrants in the Firths of Clyde, Tay and Forth, but by God, if we ever do, she’s just the gal to deploy the might of the navy to repel all invaders.

Mind you, it would have been a good week to get Gavin Williamson on the visiting “dignitaries” list. He could have popped up to explain to the Scottish Government exactly how to avoid any kind of bourach over exam results. Sadly he had to stay in London to collect his Grayling award for services to serial idiocy.

READ MORE: Exams scandal exposes Tories’ ‘rank hypocrisy’

The crowning glory of your undercover work was surely persuading BJ that Ruth Davidson should ply her future trade in what Denis Healey memorably described as “the house of the undead”. That was some trick when you think of all the profoundly unsavoury things the aforementioned Ms Davidson has been heard to say about the PM in the past.

So here we are. Lots and lots of Union Flags. Lots and lots of cabinet day trippers. Himself reputedly coming north for his holibags. And thus does the polling in favour of Scottish independence climb inexorably upwards, with barely a Scottish finger being lifted.

As I say, genius. Sheer genius.