IN a normal, fully functioning democracy, it’s reasonable to suggest that the SNP would have been pitched from office some time ago. And with them, the last hopes for an independent Scotland in the lifetimes of most of us.

Scotland right now though, is not, by any measure, a fully functioning democracy. Instead, it’s come to resemble an endless political pantomime where a small but anointed cast of players performs the roles assigned to them.

If you can get a part in this production you’re more or less made for life. If the electorate (the only group in this drama whose behaviour is unpredictable) compels you to take some time out then there’s an assortment of dependable and secure gigs in academia, civic authorities and lobbying firms available to help maintain you in the style to which Holyrood has made you accustomed.

The SNP, by virtue of the constitutional impasse which exists in the UK, are assured all the main roles. They’ve won the last 10 elections across the UK’s four main electoral jurisdictions: all of them by handsome majorities.

A combination of factors has acted as guarantor for the virtual certainty of SNP victories. The work done by Alex Salmond and the skilled team of strategists he assembled over the course of a decade laid the foundations for the remarkable victory at the 2015 UK General Election where the party won all but three of the 62 Scottish seats. In 2010, they’d taken only six seats.

In the years since, the remorselessly right-wing route taken by the UK Tories has provided the SNP with an array of heaven-sent electoral campaigning tools. This reached its apotheosis in a Brexit campaign which unleashed the far-rights dogs of war: racism, militarism and empire.

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And then, just as the effects of Brexit were beginning to wear off, along came Boris Johnson, perhaps the most corrupt and unworthy incumbent of Number 10 Downing Street in its nearly 200-year-old history. In the three years since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, an eye-watering array of malfeasances and sharp practices by Johnson and his chief lieutenants – all fuelled by greed on the grand scale – have been uncovered.

And they keep on coming.

Yet, perhaps the most significant factor guaranteeing the eternal hegemony of the SNP has been the bizarre behaviour of the Labour Party in Scotland. Their inexplicable refusal even to countenance a second referendum on Scottish independence has turned them into a marginal force in Scottish politics.

The party exists now as a collection of memories and old slogans which they shout from time to time to remind us of what they once were. They are good for nothing more than rewarding long service and diligence of those who have worked hard to get a decent position in the listings.

The Scottish Tories, save for a few weeks in the sun during Ruth Davidson’s tenure, are also there merely to provide an approximation of electoral diversity. And, as some of us had long suspected, the Scottish Greens were nothing more than a convenient vehicle for Patrick Harvie to secure a ministerial position on the coattails of independence.

So long as these moving parts all perform their assigned functions in the correct formations, everyone gets to keep their jobs and their gilded lifestyles. Merely by pledging referendums before each Scottish and UK election and seeking Section 30 Orders from Westminster, the SNP – unopposed by extraordinarily weak oppositions – romp to victories that are fuelled by whipped-up waves of “our-day-has-come” optimism among the Yes movement. That and each freshly revealed layer of corruption at the top of the UK Government.

This week’s intervention by the UK Government on the GRR Bill maintains the pattern of the last seven years. Just as the SNP were beginning to feel the heat from their own members about leading them up the hill yet again only to take them back down, along come those perfidious Tories and their attempts to undermine devolution.

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It transpired that the SNP’s “special conference” next month had been nothing more than a closely stage-managed production to kick the referendum into even longer grass. The Holyrood 2026 option carried unprecedented risks. It means the pro-independence coalition would need to win two elections by an overall majority.

Yet, for those at the top of the SNP-Green coalition and all those whose jobs depend on it, the price of failure would have been more than acceptable. By then, 12 years of unbroken and unchallenged power – and all the accoutrements and emoluments they’ve wrought – will have passed. They tried their best but an undemocratic UK Government made it impossible.

At least though, they’ve all secured a level of pension entitlement out of the very top bracket. Gradually, it was beginning to dawn on even the most supine of Sturgeon loyalists that perhaps they were being played here.

Yet, within the space of a week, the UK Tories had blocked GRR and everyone’s back on the independence message. It doesn’t matter that the Section 35 order they’ve deployed was supported by the SNP government. Or that it’s been triggered because the GRR legislation adversely impacts the 2010 UK Equality Act. This was an “attack on Scottish democracy”.

Sturgeon has indicated she was unaware that any objections might have existed under this Act. This though strains the bounds of belief. The GRR legislation was six years in the making. Several groups have come forward to say that concerns were raised. Did no one in Sturgeon’s inner circle really consider the possibility of this happening?

You begin to wonder now why the FM and the anointed political classes at Holyrood were so hell-bent on refusing to consider a handful of entirely reasonable safeguards in the GRR legislation around women’s safety.

However, those who believe now that the campaign for independence has received a significant shot in the arm by the UK Government’s intervention ought to be considering something else. That the refusal of Royal Assent has led to more scrutiny of the GRR consequences by the Scottish public. We already know that a majority of them are opposed to it.

This will feature prominently in each of the next two elections. In each of these, the SNP will, as always, have to rely on votes from people for whom independence is a preference rather than a sacred cause.

For the first time since 2014, I sense that a significant number of them feel there is something more important than self-determination: the right of women to determine who gets to see them at their most vulnerable and who gets to share their sacred places.