Ruth Wishart: Why do serial losers venture north to tell us what to think?

The Prime Minister of the UK and Minister for the Union as he styles himself, is now regarded internationally as walking proof of “Great” Britain’s decline in meaningful influence.

A man who rarely risks a trip north of Carlisle lest the minders slip up and let some non Tory voters loose on him. Given there’s no shortage of the latter. It’s why he dodged any appearance here in May.

A man too important to make time for talks with the First Minister of Scotland, but with plenty to spare for chatting up police dogs. The latter being noted for not answering back. And minimalist interest in referenda.

A man who leads a party which is little more than a rump in these parts, with half a dozen Scottish MPs in Westminster, one of whom doubles up as their Scottish leader at Holyrood.

Douglas Ross is a list MSP, not one of the favoured five who managed to win a constituency. Five out of 129! A paltry 31 seats all told when you add in those given Conservative HQ’s stamp of list approval for our version of PR.

As is the custom, Mr Johnson was kept as far away from physical contact with the media as was feasible during his 48-hour sojourn. Though on day one, on the BBC, he did claim no knowledge of the current high profile, contentious proposal for a new oil and gas field off Shetland. By day two someone had reminded him about that briefing paper he hadn’t felt it necessary to read.

The constitutional question, he averred, was as “far from the top of his agenda as it was possible to be”.

And there at least he can make common cause with Labour leader Keir Starmer, who used his interview with STV’s ever persistent Bernard Ponsonby to confirm he could see no referendum taking place in the current Scottish parliamentary term.

Sir Keir, you may recall, has just one Scottish Labour MP about his person in the Commons. At Holryood, his troops mustered just two constituency wins to add to 20 on the list.

Coming third behind the Tories in Scotland would once have been unthinkable.

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Two men then, with absolutely no political bragging rights north of the Border, but an unshakeable belief that the people who didn’t vote for them were really only kidding. Those same people who just keep on not voting for them. As I say, it’s the arrogance that gets you.

Yet what also gets under my skin is the meekness with which we greet every fresh insult. The Scottish opposition MPs at Westminster; mocked and ridiculed. Subjected to crass laughter and pointed walk-outs.

The ongoing assault on the devolution settlement, making a mockery of the Scotland Act, trampling all over any notion of legislative consent to whatever new emasculatory wheeze dreamt up by team Gove.

In some ways little Mr Gove is worthy of even more contempt than the man who conned his way into Number 10. One of those despicable faux Scots who make a career out of ridiculing the land of their birth, belittling any sense of ambition, disparaging any visible signs of innovation or ingenuity. We might call it Oliver/Neil syndrome. It is an unlovely virus for which the vaccine has yet to be discovered.

Mr Gove absolutely DOES have the constitution at the top of his agenda, and he has utilised many different scripts and tactics in his attempts to shore up this tattered Union.

As some of the London based media have twigged, his muscular Unionism shtick turned out to be a wee tad counter productive. Nothing more likely to get up the nose (sic) of the average tartan native than being slapped about the chops by an uppity Tory cabinet secretary.

Then came the beads and sweeties playbook. European funding re-imagined as a prosperity kitty but only to be disbursed into Scottish areas and for Scottish projects decided upon by the UK Government. Holyrood? Who do they think they are? Some kind of government? Aye, Michael, the one they keep voting for.

Mr Gove also came among us in advance of his boss’ state visit. As did the Chancellor of Exchequer – both to explain how grateful we must learn to be for London largesse.

Mr Gove has also taken to his new role as the Big Tease, with some alacrity. First he hoped any new referendum wouldn’t be in his lifetime. Then he mused that there might be one if it seemed the “settled will” of the populace.

Before you get too excited here, he gets to decide what constitutes that sainted state. (I suspect that particular phrase was deliberately deployed, given that it was first used by John Smith to herald devolution.)

WHAT makes me most despairing however about the contempt in which our government, our representatives, and our ability to determine our fate are held, is that somewhere along this serially insulting line we appear to have mislaid our national self-respect.

Just how much sand are we prepared to have kicked in our faces before we tell them precisely where to stick their misplaced sense of entitlement? Self-respect is no less important to a nation than an individual. It is a precious virtue; hard to earn and easy to lose.

READ MORE: Michael Russell: The real issue with the Union runs far deeper than PM’s ‘jokes’

Nurturing Scotland’s self-respect, its sense of itself, is all the more important when we find ourselves yoked to a Westminster administration which even its erstwhile supporters can recognise as both incompetent and casually corrupt.

When Johnson says he meets nobody concerned about independence on his rare, highly structured series of Scottish photo ops he’s probably right. On two counts. First off he almost never meets folk outwith his own shrinking tribe.

And secondly there are far too many Scots with no spare head space after dealing with the evils of two decades of Tory inspired austerity and Westminster indifference to its effects.

If you have been propelled to a food bank for the first time in your life, if you are wondering how increasing prices across the board – energy being just the latest – can be met with poverty wages and £1000 a year less in Universal Credit, you probably don’t lie awake at night wondering about the date of indyref2.

When Starmer says there can be no question of holding a referendum any year soon with a pandemic still untamed he can always suggest his stance merely echoes that of the First Minister.

Both men forget the rider that dealing with the corrosive effects of poverty, and recovering from the ravages of a pandemic are not tasks that many people feel happy to leave in the hands of a Tory government stiff with millionaires and intellectual inadequates. Just ask Tories like Max Hastings and Matthew Parris who have written of their despair that the Tory party has come to this.

IT is the duty of every Scot fortunate enough not have to worry about feeding their family, finding decently paid work, or living in secure affordable accommodation, to go into bat for those left behind by the malign neglect of successive Conservative administrations.

It is our duty, and the duty of our government, to remind ourselves that self-respect comes not just from our own words and actions, but how we react to those who would belittle and trash our national “brand”.

Self-respect isn’t just the building block of national pride, it’s an essential commodity for gaining respect from elsewhere.

The difference between being a doughty, bonny fechter and a doormat.