AND so, the hurly burly’s done and the battle is lost and won and we all of us have a new Prime Minister we didn’t vote for. On the plus side, we have seen Johnson leave office, so we can take five minutes to enjoy that even if I fear the relief from blustery vapid venality will be shortlived. I remember the tale of the Scottish pessimist who thinks things can’t get any worse than this, and the Scottish optimist who thinks they very well might.

On a personal level, I congratulate Liz Truss and wish her well. Where she shows any serious sign of engaging with the many problems Westminster mismanagement has caused us, I’m game to roll the sleeves up, put the badges to one side and pitch in.

Sadly, far from being a brave new dawn, I think Truss will be a continuation of the same broken system, and brings with her a bit of actual ideology which will be anathema to most Scots. She has been my opposite number at Westminster since she became Foreign Secretary after Dominic Raab, so I have seen how she deals with issues and challenges, how she engages with opponents and what language she chooses to use, to calm or enflame.

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I have to say I don’t have high hopes for her, quite the reverse. She was a LibDem, then not. A Remainer, then not, then one of a demonstrably flawed Withdrawal Agreement’s biggest cheerleaders.

As foreign secretary, she took the Northern Ireland Protocol (interestingly using her foreign affairs competence to legislate for what one would have thought should be a domestic matter) to create the abomination that is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, currently in the unelected House of Lords.Be in no doubt, this bill is wrong in law, wrong in politics and an appalling negotiating tactic.

It is wrong in law because it threatens to unilaterally rip up solemn international commitments agreed with the EU just months ago – no wonder they’ll not trust the Brits on anything else. It is wrong in politics because it undermines the Good Friday Agreement, endorsed by the people of Ireland in two referendums, and in the Northern Ireland Assembly right now a clear majority of MLAs (52 of 90) support the protocol but instead she is pandering to the DUP and her own Eurosceptic headbangers.

It is wrong as a negotiating tactic because there are plenty ways to reform the protocol written into the Protocol itself, but instead her threats to rip it up have simply put backs up in Brussels and Dublin and made the resolution of every single other issue difficult.

The UK is frozen out of Erasmus student exchanges, academic co-operation, research funding, veterinary agreements and agricultural trade – even Scotland’s seed potato exports will not be resolved while the UK continues to play silly buggers over the NI Protocol.

But there is little evidence she cares; all that is so much collateral damage to her ambition to look tough on Europe to the Tory selectorate.

During the leadership campaign she was to my mind found wanting (and wasn’t tested that hard).

On Scotland, the idea that Nicola Sturgeon should simply be ignored is an outrageous disrespect to every single one of us, and indeed the idea of respectful Unionism.

It is boneheaded in its arrogance and I hope she sees sense or gets better advisors. But if, as I suspect it was, just a cynical bit of red meat for backwoods Tory members, then it is playing with fire because it was not just them listening.

Equally, her remarks that she is not sure if President Macron is an ally are simply not something anyone who takes foreign policy seriously would say. France is the UK’s second closest neighbour, a UN P5 and Nato ally and an integral part of transport, home affairs, trade and educational co-operation.

Of course France is an ally, and this performative, petty jingoism does her no credit whatsoever. Try sorting out people smuggling in the English Channel when the French president thinks you’re a no-mark.

And as Foreign Secretary, she cut the international aid budget, has presided over massive cuts to FCDO staff and altogether limited the UK’s standing in the world.

OK, that’s not much of a concern to me, but it seems a curious set of actions for someone who believes in Britain. She also in the few substantive trade deals agreed, notably with New Zealand and Australia, sacrificed domestic farming’s interests in favour of their imports. And. That. Is A. Disgrace.

So it is early days, but at every turn I have seen Liz Truss, when offered a choice, choose her own ambition over the interests of anyone else, or find solutions to challenges only when she could turn them to her advantage.

Successfully, as her speech in front of Downing Street proves, and that probably tells you more about Westminster than I ever could. So if she now makes serious steps to fix the UK’s demonstrably broken energy market, we’ll look at her ideas with an open mind.

But I think with her every choice she will make more and more apparent to Scots that independence in Europe will be the better option for all of us.

The challenge for the SNP and the Yes Movement will be to turn that to our advantage.