UKRAINE, we are told, remains on the brink. While some observers reckon the UK has fallen into a democratic abyss. So, it seems the time is right for all those who have the sketchiest idea of democracy and those with a hugely limited idea of how constitutions work, to take centre stage.

Step up, Boris Johnson.

“We won’t accept a world in which a powerful neighbour can bully … their neighbours,” he announced to an astonished world. When a pathological liar stumbles towards ethics, people are right to be surprised. The waiting world placed its hope in the adage “every saint has a past and every sinner, a future”. And the world’s greatest stranger to the truth went on: “We won’t accept it because we believe all people – no matter where they are born – have the right to live safely, choose who governs them and to decide what organisations they aspire to be members of. Or indeed, what bodies they want to cease being members of.

“We will not compromise on that principle.”

All of this comes as a huge surprise to the multitudes that labour under the assumption that he was resolutely opposed to such constitutional change for Scots.

Alas, it is no real surprise that within days of issuing this portentous claptrap, Johnson was in Scotland, having apparently completely forgotten his commitment to national sovereignty. For him, democracy does not travel well.

At least, the next independence campaign ought simply to reiterate his words and legitimately claim they are simply responding to his dictum.

He is not the only one recently straying into deep constitutional waters, without the aid of any form of safety device Foreign correspondent James Simpson is likewise confused when it comes to how democracy works in the UK. (John Cody Fidler-Simpson CBE, to give him his proper designation, is an English foreign correspondent and world affairs editor of BBC News. He has spent all his working life with the BBC, and has reported from more than 120 countries, including 30 war zones, and interviewed many world leaders. He was educated at Magdalene College, Oxford, where he read English.) Simpson opined the following: “Just a quick constitutional reminder for the BBC’s 100th anniversary: it belongs to the people of the UK. It doesn’t belong to the Government. And, contrary to what the current Culture Secretary seems to think, it isn’t state-funded.”

Let’s spend a few moments deconstructing this pronunciamento. Who “owns” the BBC? To help answer this, let’s examine the fundamentals. Who decides its budget? Who appoints its top management? To whom does the BBC report? And who appoints them? UK Government ministers are plain. They decide.

Whatever way you cut it, it seems irrefutable that the BBC and the UK Government of the day seem joined at the hip. Moreover, its top management is drawn from Tory ranks. Simpson asserts that the BBC is not state-funded. Superficially a case may be made for this claim. The BBC is financed by a poll tax levied on all who watch live television, regardless of whether such programming is produced by the BBC itself.

As for “the BBC belonging to the people”, nonsense. Just try to get someone from BBC Scotland to justify their conduct in public. At the TNT show, we have invited the Beeb to join us on numerous occasions to explain themselves. This invitation stands. Such is their obsession with shrinking from scrutiny, we harbour little hope this invitation will elicit a response. Privately, BBC staffers have told us there is such a culture of fear that talking to the TNT show would be career-ending.

Happily, BBC Scotland has a new editor, James Cook. He seems a decent cove. We wish him well. So, let’s test his commitment to openness and the public interest. Come on the TNT show, James, and tell us why we – and so many others – are mistaken about how the Beeb operates in Scotland.

A constitutional awakening has even materialised in the DUP. Ian Paisley MP announced in the House of Commons this week that “the Tory party is in most respects the English Nationalist party”. Took a while; but he got there, to be fair.

It’s no surprise as the possibility of constitutional change beckons, 2014 scare stories are being dusted off for another outing. Let’s take just one: pensions. The Unionist approach to pensions in an independent Scotland may be summarised this way: they’re saying we ought not to trust the United Kingdom to abide by its moral contract to pay pensions to those who have contributed for decades, but we ought to trust the United Kingdom with our overall governance.

Alyn Smith MP is next week’s guest on the TNT show. Join us at 7pm, Wednesday, February 23 at 7pm