FOR the SNP’s strategists and contrivers, weeks like this one don’t come along very often. For this most risk-averse of political parties even the task of making a repeat order of office furniture must first be subject to trial by focus group.

Did the chairs deliver quantifiable outcomes? Were the materials obtained from sustainable sources? Could the colour and height of the desks in any way be deemed to be incompatible with the human rights of all sections of Scotia’s wide demographic?

So we can only imagine what agonies and convulsions have beset the SNP over the task of choosing the right time to call for a second independence referendum.

Indeed, there are still some among us who suspect that several among the party’s Matalan Army of special advisers are quite happy to maintain the constitutional status quo.

Thus the SNP wields power at Holyrood in perpetuity (or at least until a suitably senior role in a suitably perjink lobbying firm emerges).

Everyone in the party can thus rest in the knowledge that, while it’s not independence; it’s still power and power has a knack of securing a decent pension in the autumn of one’s existence. Having called for a second referendum, there immediately must have followed a tense period in which initial reaction is gauged and quantified.

Watching events surrounding the referendum and Brexit unfold, the denizens of the SNP’s inner sanctum had very little about which to fash themselves.

The sparseness of the opposition’s response and its sheer, dismal incoherence must have sounded like a symphony to the ears of the professional Nationalists.

The deluxe moments were almost solely provided by Theresa May. Ever since June 23 last year when it emerged that England and Wales had voted to take the rest of us out of Europe, we had waited to see what the Prime Minister would have to say when she finally triggered Article 50.

On Thursday evening under the gentlest of probing by Andrew Neil we got our answer: she had absolutely nothing of any substance to say.

Nine months had elapsed since the EU referendum and the best that Mrs May could offer was that she thinks the country would be better in many ways.

Could she think of one way in which Britain would be better off out of it, her inquisitor asked. Apart from some airy desire “to take back control” she could not.

It was when Neil moved on to the issue of immigration that we were able to dig down to the ugly seam of this whole matter. More time was devoted to immigration than any other issue during this interview as Neil had correctly stated that this was one of the key issues of the EU campaign. Without it, there would have been no referendum at all and this, more than anything else, propelled the Leave side to victory.

It was a timely reminder that the entire referendum was brought about by an old English obsession: fear of Johnny Foreigner.

The Prime Minister was unable to say why there had been insufficient progress in reducing the number of immigrants to the UK.

The rest of us, meanwhile, were waiting for either Mrs May or Neil to say why it was automatically assumed that there were too many immigrants and that this was so serious that it justified leaving the world’s largest and most successful trading bloc.

Scotland’s position on immigration didn’t warrant a mention in this interview with the British Prime Minister transmitted by the British Broadcasting Corporation on prime-time television. Thus we never got to hear from her about Scotland’s altogether different demographics; that we have an ageing population and that we need a significant increase in skilled immigrant labour to help our economy grow and to stop our NHS falling apart. Perhaps, though, we are being far too demanding to expect the Prime Minister of Great Britain or the BBC’s star political interviewer to acknowledge that.

The Scottish Tories seemed to take their lead from the abject performance of their overall leader.

As the week progressed, we were treated to a procession of Tory MSPs telling us that the Scottish people didn’t want a referendum despite all of the most reputable polls indicating otherwise.

Many of these Tory MSPs are, of course, involved in their own private struggle to determine how many times each can be rejected by the voters in their constituencies while remaining on the list.

One of them, Annie Wells, in an abject television encounter that ought not to be repeated before the watershed, actually appeared to reject the sovereignty of Holyrood. Ms Wells stood in Glasgow North East in the 2015 General Election and finished third with 4.7 per cent of the vote.

The next year, she fared little better, finishing third again in the Holyrood election with 8.6 per cent. For one apparently so desperate to represent the people of Glasgow’s East End her disdain for the place that pays her almost £60,000 a year is puzzling.

Meanwhile Ruth Davidson’s personal conduct during the referendum debate betrayed desperation.

Her adolescent mimicking of Joan McAlpine’s authentic west of Scotland voice grated amongst those of us who remember Ms McAlpine as a multi-award-winning journalist while the leader of the Scottish Tories was reading news bulletins from autocue at the BBC.

The Scottish Tories’ entire political strategy has recently amounted to little more than unfurling the Union flag and planting it amidst those working class communities where this still means something.

Ms Davidson’s only triumph, if you can call it that, is watching the Labour Party in Scotland wretchedly reduced to aping such tactics.

When the dust of the last few weeks begins to settle, Ms Davidson and Mrs May and their fellow travellers in Scottish Labour must face a couple of raw facts.

The SNP easily won the last Scottish election on a manifesto commitment to hold a second referendum if there was a material and significant change in the UK’s circumstances such as Brexit.

It did so by being the first party in Scottish political history to gain more than one million votes. The previous year it sent 56 out of 59 MPs to Westminster.

The Tories’ continuing denial of the sovereign will of the Scottish people as expressed in two successive national elections is a sign that they have all but given up hope of preserving the Union.