IN the media firestorm which followed the leakage of the harassment committee’s report – officially out on Tuesday if anyone still cares – Douglas Ross MP, part time leader of the Scottish Tories, was a constant studio presence.

And why not? Gifts this size rarely ­arrive with the spring equinox and Dougie was desperate to unwrap a pre Christmas ­pressie. So he put on his best IM Jolly face, the more in sorrow than anger number, and solemnly intoned: “the holder of the highest office in the land must be held to the highest standards”.

Which dictum might have a lot more force if its writ managed to run beyond Berwick and Carlisle. But Dougie, who sits in the Commons to where he fled from the Scottish parliament, has a ringside seat every Wednesday when the holder of “the highest office in the land” misleads ­parliament week after week. Or, as they are not allowed to say in that chamber, keeps telling lies.

Also in that chamber is a Health ­Secretary who was found by a High Court judge to have broken the law, and a Home ­Secretary who was found guilty of breaching the ministerial code. It cost you and me hundreds of thousands to buy the silence of the senior civil servant who went public with her ­unsavoury record of bullying.

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There is also a rising stench of corruption from the Covid contracts liberally bestowed on Tory donors and pals. In a phrase only too familiar to all Scots, the UK government line is that “now is not the time” to have an inquiry into alleged iniquity. Among those who beg to differ is former Tory Health ­Secretary Stephen Dorrell who migrated to the Lib Dems in 2019.

According to an article he wrote last week, Westminster’s resistance to holding an inquiry is the best reason for having one. Indeed Mr D. I believe this will ultimately prove THE scandal de nos jours, but Mr Johnson’s other party trick as a political Houdini may still be pulled off.

Back at our own ranch, it’s not the first time I’m grateful for Michael Russell’s ­invention of the term “clusterbourach.” Were I to offer a publisher the outline of a novel where a country on the verge of independence faced that prospect being de-railed because the two most prominent architects of the movement were busy knocking lumps out of each other, I would get a pretty swift knock back with a note saying the plot was way too fantastical.

Yet here is where we have fetched up; the main independence party pursuing a ­private war, and a Westminster-weary public screaming from the sidelines for folks to get a bloody grip. An election a bare seven weeks away, and too many parliamentarians nervously covering their own backsides as they face the ­verdict of the electorate.

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In the wake of so many polls suggesting a majority for independence, the British state already has the tacketies laced up. Though it’s not just the Govian guerrillas we should worry about. There is an unholy trinity on the loose right now.

The Unionist parties are doing what they do. They are being aided and abetted however, by many people well versed in the darker media arts. The man whom ­David Cameron dispatched north in 2014 to orchestrate the Better Together ­campaign has been re-incarnated as a journalist and offered the arresting thought the other day that Boris Johnson could be the Unionist’s best secret ­weapon. The bookies immediately offered 100 to1against, and 4/5 on for a porcine flypast if he’s proved right.

MEANWHILE, on social media, there are now so many trolls that the bullshit ­detectors have got metal fatigue. According to Norwegian folklore trolls dwell in “isolated rocks, mountains or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human beings”.

Alternatively, live together in Unionist units and are charged with working ­under and over ground to destabilise the ­independence movement. This is no more than we might expect, given our experience of seven years ago. Just as we may prepare for an avalanche of disinformation on everything from pension rights to currency options.

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The third hostile arm is perhaps the most dispiriting. It is the small army of people who self declare as independence supporting but have spent the last weeks and months spouting vitriolic attacks on all of the necessary building blocks.

These are men, always men, who have a template for how and when they ­visualise independence, and anything which doesn’t conform to their personal vision must be trashed. Hell can mend the ­consequences for the Yes movement.

This posse of self indulgent, self regarding arsonists are not so much fiddling while Holyrood burns as chucking cans of petrol on the flames of a parliament many of them purported to regard as an essential building block of self determination.

They might find standing a little ­further back greatly aids perspective. The ­handling of the Salmond case was self evidently deeply flawed and many of those officials at the heart of it have often seemed more concerned with hanging on to their jobs than fessing up to any dirty work at the crossroads. All of that is true.

The fact that the leader and chief ­executive of the current ruling party are ­married is an anomaly which ­undoubtedly affects the normal separation of roles and power. At the very least it implies a ­conflict of loyalties.

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Yet there is a much bigger picture which doesn’t just determine Scotland’s future in the next few weeks and months, but arguably for decades to come. If this country turns its back on the opportunity to shape its own destiny an all too ­familiar one is on offer instead.

Hands up those who really, really want to sign up for more government from one which has caused mayhem to Scotland’s exporters, which has an increasingly ­despicable attitude towards the inward migration we need, which has delusions of global grandeur even as its influence becomes ever more minimal, and which, not least, is dismantling devolution in plain sight.

THERE are those, inside and outside the Scottish National Party who are guilty of the cardinal political sin of complacency. Some of them don’t seem to grasp Scotland is in an existential fight for her life. Some of them don’t much care, because they’re fixated only on the current government and upcoming election.

Well time to wake up and smell the catastrophe. If you genuinely think that a Tory Westminster government led by Johnson or his successors is in our best interests then you are probably beyond persuasion. (Some might say redemption).

Yet that is the surefire fate that awaits a still dependant Scotland given the odds against a sufficient Labour revival to change the Westminster guard.

In contrast, every party in Scotland stands to gain from an unfettered Holyrood administration. The Scottish Tories, for the first time, will earn that adjective. Ditto Scottish Labour. The Greens will prosper more in a country wedded to renewables, and the Lib Dems might just re-discover their home rule roots.

At the moment none of the parties is offering credible enough opposition, and good government is always contingent on strong opposition. Independence will strengthen both.

The next Scottish parliament will need to up its game. Not least its committees which have too often found it impossible to check their party hats in at the door. (Plus leaking reports is totally contrary to their written code of conduct.)

So we have a fair way to go to build this new Scotland of ours; we have a 22-year-old parliament, and much it could do better. Yet I cast my eye down south to what 900-odd years has brought about. And I don’t want any more of it.