IT would be hard to overstate how utterly disastrous the first month of Liz Truss’s tenure in Downing Street has been. It’s made all the more stunning by the fact that all politics was shut down for two weeks, so really, this is only a fortnight’s worth of chaos and calamity.

There is a real risk that this article will already be out of date by the time it is published, but at the time of writing, we have seen the collapse of the pound, warnings from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), homeowners being hit by soaring mortgage rates and a £65 billion intervention by the Bank of England to stave off what it called a “material risk to UK financial stability”.

All of this was triggered by what must have been one of the most inept and badly judged budgets in history.

Even by the standards of the Tories, it was truly appalling. With tax cuts for the rich and Thatcherite gimmicks like “investment zones” for corporations wanting to pay even less tax, it was an attempt to take us back to the worst of the 1980s.

READ MORE: Liz Truss tells BBC Radio Scotland Tory tax cuts would 'turbocharge' Scottish economy

The super-rich may have been putting their champagne on ice, but it was disastrous for everybody else. With prices soaring and bills skyrocketing, the Tories plan to pay for this giveaway to their friends and donors by cutting the benefits of vulnerable and low-paid people and slashing public services.

It wasn’t a budget for a recovery, it was one designed for bankers, polluters and the super-wealthy.

At first, the Scottish Tories were overjoyed, with their MSPs taunting the Scottish Government for not replicating the terribly judged tax cuts and corporate giveaways.

One week later and they’re no longer looking as proud, with the pound hitting historic new lows and Bank of England sources telling Sky News that if it hadn’t been for their intervention there would have been mass insolvencies of pension funds.

The Tories have proven that they have absolutely no economic credibility. But this isn’t the game that they seem to think it is. Their cruel and inept mishandling of the economy will have serious consequences for millions of families who are already being stretched from all directions.

They will try to blame everyone but themselves. Their outriders are already managing to keep a straight face while blaming the IMF for being too “left-wing” or “socialist”. One Tory Lord, Daniel Hannan, even went as far as writing an abysmal article for right-wing blog Conservative Home that somehow blamed Keir Starmer, while another blamed “Remainers”.

A far more believable explanation is that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are simply unfit to be in Downing Street.

It is not just the economic credibility of the Tories which is being destroyed in real-time. It is also the economic credibility of the Union.

It is often said that in 2014 the No campaign won based on their economic arguments. But everything they promised has turned to dust. The reality is so much worse than anything the Yes campaign thought would be possible. We were accused of exaggerating, but it turns out we were downplaying the risk of staying in the UK. In the space of eight years, the Tories have totally shredded the economic case for No.

How can a government that has waged so much chaos and pain in a matter of weeks have the audacity to lecture anyone about fiscal responsibility? Every day that Scotland’s economy sits in their hands is another day of spiralling prices for households and national economic decline.

But the reality is that this didn’t happen overnight.

Kwarteng’s historically poor judgement may have been the catalyst for the current crisis, but many of the structural faults in the economy were already glaring.

They were certainly exacerbated by the folly of Brexit, which has been disastrous for jobs and exports. The value of the pound has fallen by around one-third since that fateful day in 2016, and successive Tory prime ministers have failed to grapple with the monstrous experiment they have unleashed.

We can’t go on like this. We can’t allow millions of lives to be ruined or turned upside down by the selfishness and ineptitude of yet another Tory government that Scotland didn’t vote for and can’t remove. We can’t wait for Labour to win an election just so that it does things slightly differently (remember that argument in 2014 that we just needed to wait for Ed Milliband to win in 2015?).

Tinkering at the edges within the UK is not enough. We need far bolder and more radical action than Keir Starmer or Anas Sarwar would be willing to do.

There is an alternative. With the powers of a normal nation, we can rejoin Europe and forge a fairer, greener and better future without the spectacular incompetence of Downing Street.

With Greens in government in Scotland, we are already showing the different path our country can take.

The Tories cut Universal Credit, but we doubled Child Payments. They left the housing market in the control of wealthy landlords, but we have introduced a rent freeze and eviction ban. They have overseen flatlining wages, but we have mandated the Real Living Wage for all Scottish Government contracts.

READ MORE: Bombshell Ian Blackford letter shows Kwasi Kwarteng refused expert OBR forecast before mini-budget

Scotland has already suffered 12 painful years of Tory failure. We cannot afford any more. Next year’s independence referendum will give us the opportunity to take a better path and build a recovery that works for people and the planet, rather than a Tory Britain that only works for the rich and powerful.

This week should not just be viewed as a turning point for the UK Government – it must also be one for the independence movement.

We are living in a time of unprecedented and unparalleled Tory failure.

Let’s turn it around by taking our future and our finances into our own hands.