So he came, he saw, and he provided social media with a whole lot of jokes about getting crabs. That was pretty much the extent of our part time Prime Minister's visit to Scotland. The trip consisted of a few carefully stage managed photo-ops, and a determination to keep well away from any Scottish people in the wild, those who hadn't been vetted beforehand for their allegience to the Conservative party. This is, apparently, what's going to save the Preciousssss Union™.

There appears to be a growing consensus amongst the Conservatives that the rise in support for Scottish independence is but a mere blip. This is based upon nothing more than desperation, despair, and a complete lack of any idea of what they're going to do to reverse it. It's far easier to carry on imagining that a situation that's bad for you will get better all by itself than it is to take responsibility for it and work out how to solve it. It's the political equivalent of hoping for a lottery win in order to sort out your money problems.

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The rise in support for independence is far more than a blip. It represents a consistent pattern which has been in evidence for quite some time. As the reality of Brexit has started to bite, people in Scotland have been reconsidering the promises made to our country in 2014 about how we could only secure our place in Europe by voting against independence. The Conservatives have themselves compounded that sense of betrayal by refusing to allow any of the devolved administrations to have a substantial or significant say in the form that Brexit is to take. Furthermore they've decided to use Brexit in order to embark upon a power grab to further centralise control in Westminster.

Boris Johnson and the Brextremists in his party have only got themselves to blame for an increasing disenchantment in Scotland with the UK. But it's far easier for them to hope that if they keep repeating the same old SNPbad stories, and keep telling us that we're too poor and too dependent upon the good will and good graces of Westminster, that support for independence will go away all by itself. It means that they don't have to address their own behaviour and their own culpability in undermining support for the Precioussss Union™ that they affect to love.

According to reports, Johnson's solution for dealing with Scotland is to embark upon an exercise in childish petulance. He will no longer meet with the First Minister at Bute House, because that would imply that the First Minister is an equal, or is at least a political figure who deserves respect and who wields an electoral mandate from the people of Scotland. Instead Johnson proposes to ignore the Scottish Government, which will serve no other purpose than to remind Scotland of its subordinate position within the UK. Only a man who has no space left in his ego for how he might be perceived by other people could possibly imagine that this will help rather than hinder.

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Johnson also intends to double down on the propaganda, because in this land of Scotland where there are some 38 daily and Sunday newspapers of which only The National and its Sunday edition support independence and where control of broadcasting is reserved to Westminster, the real problem is that there's not enough pro-UK narrative. What will really ensure that Scotland moves away from its increasing attraction to going our own way is to keep telling us we're too poor, only more loudly.

The Tories will be having none of that nonsense about treating Scotland as a constituent member of a union. Informing the Scottish Government about UK policies which have an impact on Scotland only encourages those Scotchlandshire folk to get ideas above their station. No, what's really going to do the trick is for Boris Johnson to fly in, have a quick tour of a distillery where he'll make a bad joke about loving the Scotch, and then bugger off back to London after mouthing a few nostrums about how the nations of the UK are like a team of superheroes. His problem is that everyone in Scotland knows that in this scenario, Scotland's only superpowers are invisibility and silence.

Johnson hasn't got where he is today by listening to Scotland, and he's certainly not about to start now. We can expect more quick visits in the future, helicoptering in like the foreign potentate he's increasingly perceived as. He'll pose for a quick photo-op that's been carefully managed to ensure that he's kept as far away as possible from the restless natives, and then he'll go back to London as quickly as possible. Meanwhile support for independence will continue to rise as Scotland more and more comes to the conclusion that if we want this country to be seen and heard, we will only be able to do so as an independent nation.

This article is part of a new digital-only section of our website we are trialling, where we’ll bring you reaction, analysis and opinion pieces by our best writers in real-time, without you having to wait for the newspaper to be printed. Please send any feedback to callum.baird@thenational.scot