IN normal politics parties seek to engage as widely as they can while attempting to convince voters of the folly of their opponents’ policies and the merits of their own. The Scottish Tories, though, are fighting this election on an anti-politics ticket. Merely trying to convince the Scottish public once and for all that the Union offers the best future is considered insufficient; they don’t want anyone to have the choice at all. It’s the first time in the history of UK democratic politics that a party has fought an election solely on a desire to stop political engagement.

It’s not difficult to grasp why the Scottish Tories are displaying obsessional traits in their implacable desire to stop a second referendum on independence. The party is structured around protecting embedded privilege and the narrow interests of the corporations and others who fund it.

The less scrutiny of the methods deployed to maintain ancient privileges, the easier the Tories can rest in their beds. The 2014 referendum distressed them greatly. When you can command the services of print and broadcast media and the big financial houses that you are sworn to protect you can reasonably manage the expectations of voters, so long as they don’t do anything unexpected such as turning out in grotesquely unmanageable numbers.

Thus, when it became obvious to the Tories and their new allies in the Labour Party that voter engagement was reaching levels they considered to be boisterous and unpredictable they set about the task of smearing them. First, their favoured outriders among the pro-UK commentariat began to disparage any independence gatherings deemed too large for their liking. We journalists have a tendency to delude ourselves that the full deposit of political truth has been revealed only unto to us. For many, the experience of being among large gatherings of ordinary people assembling under independence banners was to feel a frisson of fear.

So they began to dismiss them as rent-a-mobs, undisciplined hordes who failed to understand that politics was a sophisticated business requiring years of training, a fully-stocked contacts book and a tongue wizened by the licking of political VIPs’ feet.

The Labour Party in Scotlandbegan admirably to perform the role of useful idiots in the pro-UK coalition. This is when Alistair Darling, Jim Murphy and Gordon Brown forged the strategy that has all but destroyed Labour in Scotland. They began to demonise swathes of their supporters whose unforgivable sin was to display sympathy for the cause of self-determination. The late Gerald Kaufman described Labour’s 1983 General Election campaign as the longest suicide note in history due to its overtly socialist timbre. Compared with Scottish Labour’s conduct in 2014 and beyond, that suicide note of was a drop of spilled ink.

The remnants of Labour in Scotland has been reaping a political whirlwind since. It is its abiding tragedy that it chose the easy option of outright hostility to self-determination over the harder one of taking on the SNP in its incompetent management of the NHS in Scotland and its abject failure to bridge the educational attainment gap after a decade in power. The Tories meanwhile persist with the sophistry that “the people don’t want another referendum”.

Yet, if the SNP is returned in a majority of Scottish seats next month it will be the third national election (four, counting its expected triumph in the local authority polls )in two years. In each, Nicola Sturgeon campaigned on seeking a second referendum if “a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out the EU against our will”. If anyone remained in any doubt that such a change has occurred then listen once more to Theresa May’s unhinged and paranoid rant in front of the cameras at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday afternoon after meeting the Queen. The next day it was announced that HRH the Duke of Edinburgh was retiring from public life. Any connection between these two events should of course be condemned as baseless and wretched innuendo.

Admittedly, being leader of the anti-referendum party that is nonetheless transfixed by the referendum hasn’t done Ruth Davidson’s UK profile and status much harm. She is a polished and eloquent performer on the UK political stage and you wonder what heights she could reach if she led a party built around proper policies rather than an empty slogan.

Scotland has been undergoing a prolonged cycle of political upheaval since the SNP won a Holyrood landslide in 2011. The causes are to be found in England opting to be ruled by a government of the hard right unduly influenced by the ideas of the politically delinquent Ukip. Socially, politically and culturally it is retreating into a state characterised by fear and suspicion of the outside world and deluded by the fantasy of reviving its 18th century empire.

One way or another, the question of Scottish independence will be settled by 2021. Ms Davidson and her allies in Scottish Labour insist that the constitutional debate has raged at the expense of day-to-day government. Others would suggest that this is why we employ an army of career civil servants. Ms Davidson’s buoyant personality and communication skills have contributed to a five-year period in which Scottish affairs have been discussed among the UK’s political elite to an unprecedented degree. They are being analysed and disseminated throughout Europe and the America too. Yet, apart from Ms Davidson, many of the most eloquent and compelling voices have advocated Scottish independence. Pre-eminent among them have been those of Ms Sturgeon and her predecessor as First Minister, Alex Salmond.

The values propelling independence (progressiveness, openness and equality) are a rebuke to old ideas historically associated with nationalist movements. This is acknowledged across the world. For the first time Scottish independence has been taken seriously in places where it was previously unknown. As a result, people are no longer asking “why” but “why not”. Ironically, Ms Davidson has helped to build this momentum by choosing to base an entire campaign and her whole political existence in a rejection of it. Her approach has provided it with oxygen.

There is a lesson in this for the SNP. By any reasonable analysis it has become the political establishment in Scotland. It, too, has begun to display some of the symptoms of a controlling and centralising malady that has seen significant numbers of its supporters and agents attempt to shut down debate and slander opponents. It would be a bitter irony if this was to characterise its campaign during the second referendum. Independence gained in such a fashion would be something disfigured and unattractive for those of us who have lately become persuaded by the merits of its cause.