SEVERAL people have asked me for my opinion, as a writer about history, on the One Britain One Nation (OBON) nonsense that has caused such a furore.

You may not be surprised to learn that I find the whole project a crass, stupid, moronic, mindless, foolish, ignorant, nauseatingly silly and utterly self-defeating exercise in pandering to the Brexit tendency in England and the Unionist minority elsewhere.

OBON has to been seen for what it is – propaganda of the worst sort, wrapping up the English Tory Brexit mentality in red, white and blue and involving children in a frankly pathetic campaign that is replete with disinformation and downright lies. History has many examples of what happens when populist authoritarians embrace a faux nationalism, and such episodes rarely end well.

As a self-respecting Scot and as someone with a grasp of history, I cannot allow this piece of Albionic perfidy to be perpetuated with impunity. For history teaches us one certain thing – there is no such thing as a “British” nation. There was once a British Empire, and as I have frequently written, Scots played a disproportionate part in its development, but Britain as a nation? You could argue that it has all the characteristics of a nation and is treated as such by much of the rest of the world, but that is pure semantics, because there is no such “one nation” as Britain and never has been.

Too many people use Britain as a short form for the United Kingdom, and to many people in the USA and elsewhere, the UK, Britain and England are synonymous. That’s because England has made itself so. There’s a scene in the 1956 film The Man Who Never Was which sums up the issue and it made a big impression on me when I first saw it 40 years ago.

It’s based on the true story of Operation Mincemeat in 1943 which a dead body was dropped off the coast of Spain by the Royal Navy with “secret plans” for the Allied invasion of Greece, not Italy, in an attached briefcase.

Lt Ewen Montagu, played by Clifton Webb, asks the dead man’s father, played by that brilliant Scottish character actor Moultrie Kelsall, for permission to use the corpse. Webb/Montagu says: “I can assure you that this is an opportunity for your son to do a great thing for England.”

READ MORE: One Britain One Nation founder: 'Shame' on those who criticise our song

Kelsall replies: “My son, sir, was a Scotsman. Very proud of it.”

“I beg your pardon,” says Montagu.

Kelsall’s face is a picture as he says the father’s reply: “Never mind. We’re used to that. You English always talk about England when you mean Britain.”

The ruse worked by the way – Hitler diverted divisions to Greece instead of Italy – but that scene never happened in real life. Most experts have concluded that the body was that of a Welshman, Glyndwr Michael but words of screenwriter Nigel Balchin encapsulated the commonly-held concept that England is Britain, and here we are 65 years later and OBON is again repeating that contention.

Also from the film world, Sir Sean Connery got it right when he wrote in the afterword to his book Being a Scot, written with Murray Grigor: “Ever since the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England created Great Britain in 1707, England has always considered itself Britain. Where my mother was born in the Highlands, the rail timetables referred to Scotland as North Britain. But was there ever a South Britain? It was only recently that Edinburgh’s North British Hotel was renamed ‘The Balmoral’. Could London ever have named a major hotel ‘The South British’? It is this inequality of attitude that has always irritated me.” It is still the same. What “one nation” is this Britain? Is it the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the current and THIRD incarnation of the UK which will only be 100 years old this year? Or is it just a name and flag of convenience?

Here are the facts: the current UK, let’s call it UKGBNI for short, consists of four separate nations, four distinct countries. The first UK incarnation was created by the Union of 1707, when it was emphasised that the “United Kingdom of Great Britain” was just that: a kingdom, as at that time were most countries in Europe, there being only a handful of republics. Even the Parcel of Rogues who sold out Scotland never intended that this country, this nation, should cease to exist, hence the reason why Scots law, religion and education were maintained. It was a political union to create a state, not a new country, and as we have most certainly seen in our own times, states come and go.

UKGBNI is a unitary state created only a century ago by the partition of Ireland, and that’s another aspect of OBON that is historically wrong. England, Scotland and Wales inhabit the island of Great Britain, but Northern Ireland is not “British” in the geographical sense of the word. Right now even fervent Unionists in Northern Ireland have seen what the Tory Government has done to their nation with the Brexit they voted against, don’t forget, and are wondering if Ulster really is British, as the slogan used to say.

It is a historical fact that Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have been one unitary state for nigh on 100 years, but one nation? I really don’t think so, and since the post-war demise of the British Empire, England and Scotland have been on increasingly divergent paths.

In historical terms that is all we are doing – tearing up the treaty of Union and going our separate ways as nations.

Remember, please, that we are not going to gain independence, we are going to regain it.

And OBON has helped, not hindered, our great cause.