LIFE is but a stage, Parliament provides the theatre and the politicians are the players. Some like Joanna Cherry are destined to be stars and some, like Jo Swinson and Willie Rennie, to provide the light relief.

Jo and Willie actually sounds like a duo of poor comedians down the bill in old time music hall. Not as funny as Fran and Anna nor as contemporary as Francie and Josie. There is actually a story about Mike and Bernie Winters at the Glasgow Empire. After Mike did his turn on the clarinet Bernie peeked through the curtains. “Christ Almichty,” shouted an audience heckler. “There’s twa o them.”

So make your feelings known now if you’re sick of hearing of Jo Swinson and Willie Rennie’s disingenuous commentary on independence and the SNP.

The two leaders of the Liberal Democrats, one at Westminster, one in Scotland, are fast becoming parodies of Long John Silver’s parrot, squawking “SNP-Bad” instead of “pieces of eight”.

In fact, they’re both starting to sound like a reincarnation of Ruth Davidson, whose one-trick pony on opposing all things independently minded, has now thankfully been sent to the knacker’s yard.

Following on from Rennie’s refusal to regard a Scottish election win as a democratic mandate, this week started with a fact-lite interview with Jo Swinson. In order to grab some attention in the current noisy political circus, she equated Scottish nationalism with English nationalism and the whole idea of exceptionalism and identity politics.

As a humanist, she said, she just couldn’t buy it. Mind you, as a humanist and a liberal, she managed to buy a lot of very unpalatable polices while in coalition with the Tories. And then, of course, there is that uncomfortable footage from the Commons in days of yore of a young Jo demanding an In/Out referendum on Europe. When it comes to polices the Liberals approach is single and transferable.

Now as every good parent knows, when your child is kicking off and causing an attention-seeking fuss, they are best ignored until it all blows over. So it is with Swinson this week. Not content with her anti-democratic stance on Brexit and her pledge to just revoke the whole shebang without consulting the UK voters, nor her fantasy bid for the position of new PM, nor acting like a thorn in the side of a potential government of national unity, she’s got her eyes on Unionist die-hards in Scotland who have left the Tories in droves and are searching for a new home.

Jo needs to bang her Union drum as loudly as possible to be heard above the din and generate some press coverage for the LibDems. But here is where the good parenting comes in, because, after an outburst, a little lesson needs to be taught – you can’t just throw a tantrum, upset everybody with unreasonable behaviour and expect to get away with it. In other words, we’re talking consequences here because Swinson’s comments have gone down in Scotland as fast as the sterling exchange rate.

Swinson objects to what she subjectively interprets Scottish nationalism to be, as a kind of “we’re-better-than-you-ism”, an isolationist approach with a desperation to be rid of our neighbours. In her eyes, all forms of nationalism are the same, English or Scottish, obsessed with identity to the detriment of everything else.

I thought I would add another perspective to all of this. I wonder if it has ever entered Jo and Willie’s heads that there must be a reason why so many BAME Scots have flocked to the SNP in ever larger numbers when Alex Salmond took the helm many years ago, and still continue to support the party now.

It is because, as Westminster politics turned nasty and inward the SNP seized the ground of civic nationalism, – positively promoting “New Scots” and making clear in the immortal words of the late Bashir Ahmed MSP that Scotland’s national party couldn’t care where people come from, only where we are going together as a nation.

That declaration of togetherness, of equality, of trust, meant the world to BAME Scots, especially since many of our forbears well understood how Westminster through the ages had made so many people in so many lands feel second class in their own country. How could Jo and Willie ever understand given that in their entire lives they have never been made to feel unwanted and disregarded because of the colour of their skin? That would require real empathy, which they demonstrably lack.

And where were Jo and Willie when Westminster politics turned to darkness? Of course they were sucking up to their Tory pals and keeping them in power.

Theresa May was in the Home Office, plotting polices that led to the Windrush scandal and opened the door for the likes of Priti Patel. All this while sharing ministerial cars with Jo Swinson, whose Liberal Democratic values were placed in suspended animation for the duration of the coalition!

And what a contrast between Swinson and the other parliamentary Jo – Jo Cherry. While Swinson fulminates about the wrongs of the SNP, Cherry defends the rights of everyone. In the space of a single year she has pulled off not one but two amazing court triumphs against the Government – first on the lawfulness of Parliament revoking Article 50 and now with the unlawfulness of Johnson hoodwinking the Queen into proroguing. One of these women is a real leader and it ain’t the Illiberal non-Democrat.

No doubt Swinson personally believes that it is better for Scotland to stay in the Union than forge its own future. She is entitled to her opinion, but it sounds very hollow now Boris Johnson and his unlawful band of Brexit brigands are causing such constitutional chaos.

How can we change this? How can we protect all the progressive and inclusive advances put in place by our devolved Government, the pro-immigration, open-minded, internationalist approach? Not by being the poor relation, the surly lodger or the patronised younger sibling. Not by staying in this unequal, unbalanced Union but through self-determination. Through independence, Scotland will soon get to have her say again at a General Election. It was said that the Glasgow Empire was the bad comics’ graveyard. Jo and Willie may soon be told to exit – stage right.