THAT was the week that was. And that was the name of the breakthrough TV satire of the early 1960s when the great David Frost et al turned an unforgiving eye on the death throes of a Tory administration.

Some see clear analogies with these far off times in the travails of the current Johnson Government.

In both cases the Tories had or have been in power for more than a decade under a succession of prime ministers. In both cases the government had suffered grievously from a foreign entanglement which had damaged their credibility and fundamentally questioned Britain’s role in the world.

In the 1950s it was Suez. More recently the European Union.

In both cases Tory governments have seemed incompetent, accident-prone and totally incapable of addressing serious issues, be it the Cold War of the early 1960s or the pandemic of today.

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In both cases the prime minister – Macmillan in the 60s and Johnson today – was an outsider, an opportunist who had picked up the pieces from the disasters of his predecessors, electorally victorious but still very vulnerable to internal dissent.

But there the analogies end. For a start Macmillan was a political giant compared to Johnson. Macmillan was suave, sophisticated and a master of the game. Johnson is chaotic, ill-disciplined and unscrupulous. But there is every sign that while the giant fell the lesser man will continue to prosper, at least politically. Here is why.

By far the most important is the opposition or lack of it. In the early 1960s Labour were led by the dazzling Harold Wilson, the finest opposition leader of the 20th century. From Labour looking played out, past it, riven and driven with ancient feuds, Wilson in virtually no time repositioned them as the white-hot standard-bearers of a modern age.

Now Labour are led by a benighted dullard whose main qualification is that he is not Jeremy Corbyn. Presented with gift after political gift, Starmer still contrives to make Johnson’s political gyrations look almost normal.

That is why Johnson has survived the Dominic Cummings Exocets, not just to make it to the altar but to sustain a comfortable opinion poll lead this weekend. Cummings’s most telling phrase at his marathon committee session was to bemoan a political system which offered a choice between Corbyn and Johnson. He could have added or between Johnson and Starmer.

LABOUR’S underlying problems are even greater than the Tories’. The Tories are (at least) two parties; one traditional, comfortable with power and privilege; the other Brexit-driven with a nasty streak – from blue rinse to blue wall, intent on building yachts but not bridges.

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However, Labour have a bigger problem than just their traditional party divisions. They are facing a wholesale defection of much of their working-class base to Johnson populism. This then is the likely shape of things to come in Brexit Britain – a Tory Party incapable of governing and a Labour opposition incapable of getting into government.

It is not an appealing prospect and not one that Scotland should countenance for a moment longer. There shall never be a more propitious time to force the constitutional issue.

Never has the prospect of an economically successful, socially just, small European nation looked more enticing and never has the grim alternative of a British blob of post-imperial prejudice looked less attractive.

Admittedly the SNP do not have their problems to seek, the most important of which is the intellectual and strategy vacuum of the last seven years. Instead of independence vision, cosy careerists have been allowed to feast.

However, the fundamentals of the independence case are sound and just at the moment when the entire framework of British society is fractured. If we build the moment, the hope and idealism will return.

Set the timescale and galvanise the nation.