‘I WOULD love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.” These were the words of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, as she addressed a fringe meeting at the Tory party conference.

Unfortunately, it is far from the only appalling view that has been voiced this week. The party chairman, Jake Berry MP, also hit the headlines when he displayed a similar lack of empathy in saying if people can no longer afford energy bills, they should cut their consumption or get better jobs.

The whole week of conference has been a festival of complacency and cruelty. When they haven’t been revelling in the misery they are inflicting on others, the Tories have been gleefully talking about the need to double down on drilling and fracking, regardless of the environmental consequences.

The Prime Minister was happy to play to the worst instincts of her members during her speech, which was more lead balloon than Iron Lady. She has no answers, she has no plans – instead, she directed her barbs at trade unions, at the media, at the Scottish Government and at climate campaigners – all those fighting against her cruel policies.

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The high point of her speech was when the two Greenpeace protesters got into the room and unfurled a banner on the conference floor. They were there to ask a very important question: who voted for this?

Within seconds they were dragged out by security to a rapturous response from the Tory party faithful. But the question is one that won’t go away.

Scotland certainly didn’t vote for the economic chaos that she has inflicted, whether it is the free-falling pound, soaring interest rates or the £65 billion intervention that was forced on the Bank of England.

We didn’t vote for the cruel and racist Rwanda deportation flights that the Home Secretary is so determined to see. Nor did we vote for the tax cuts that are being given to some of the richest corporations in the world or for the brutal benefit cuts that are going to be made to pay for the mess they created.

The only positive to come out of the whole conference was when the Prime Minister and her Chancellor were eventually forced to U-turn on the tax break they were offering to the very richest people. Abolishing the 45p tax rate has always been a Tory ambition but their timing was so misjudged and the politics were so toxic that even senior Tories were opposed to it.

Of course, the U-turn didn’t come until after the embattled Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, had haplessly called for the Scottish Government to replicate the exact same disastrous cut.

The polls may be showing a significant Labour lead, but even if that is what comes to pass, the next election could still be years away. The Tories still have a majority of 80, and they will do a lot of damage in the meantime.

In any case, when it comes to so many of the big issues, Labour fall well short.

Would a Labour government remove Trident or end the hostile environment towards migrant communities? Would they let us rejoin the European Union or reform the voting system and remove the undemocratic House of Lords? Would they recognise Scotland’s democratic right to hold an independence referendum? Certainly not if past form is anything to go by.

When it comes to all of these issues and so many more, Labour aren’t really an opposition, they’re an echo. Only this week, Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves blasted the Tory government for not being efficient enough in terms of deporting people who are seeking asylum.

These are not the values that I want to be at the heart of how Scotland is run, or who it is run for. Yet, increasingly, we are not just seeing Tories ignoring Scotland – we are seeing them trying to overrule us too.

There has been a power grab since Brexit which looks set to continue. The issue was back in the spotlight last week when the UK Government’s decision to roll back on a number of environmental protections that had been secured over decades in the European Union.

It wasn’t just an attack on nature – it was also an attack on devolution. The plans, which were announced as part of the disastrous mini-Budget, risk undermining our planning process, the retained EU laws and the Scottish Government’s policy of seeking alignment with EU standards where possible.

But that is not the only legislative threat on the horizon. The Scottish Government opted out of supporting Downing Street’s Procurement Bill but the powers within it will still apply to contracting authorities in Scotland which are cross-border bodies and could confer unnecessary powers on UK Ministers to further legislate in areas of devolved competence without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.

At Tory conference this week, Douglas Ross made it clear that he doesn’t want the Scottish Parliament to have any more powers, saying: “A line in the sand, no further powers need to be devolved”.

The reality is that devolution is not enough. It does not allow us to protect Scotland from the cuts, austerity and cruelty of the UK policies that Douglas Ross has supported and nor does it allow us to realise our full potential.

Party conferences are part of our democracy, but watching the scenes of celebration from the Tory faithful, it’s like they don’t live in the same universe as the rest of us. All around them, people are hurting, but they simply don’t care.

Next weekend will be the Scottish Greens conference in Dundee, which will be as different as it is possible for a conference to be. We will be talking about the transformative change that is needed in Scotland and around the world, and how we can deliver it.