PERHAPS Scotland hasn’t changed much in the five years since the first referendum on independence but its relationship with England has.

In these years you might have expected the SNP government to have worried and harassed Westminster’s Tory administration at every turn as it sought to press home the case for self-determination. In this rendering it would reach for a sturdy tool-kit: different spending priorities; the sharp lurch to the right of the Tories; the creation of hostile environments for minorities; the one-sided austerity programme providing tax cuts for the wealthy even as it cut basic lifelines to disadvantaged communities.

The requirement to chivvy the Tories, however, has become redundant. Why attempt to land punches on the acolytes of the Union when they are making such a good job of self-immolation? Brexit and the manner in which the Tory right has approached it constitutes a much more eloquent White Paper on independence than the first one. Certainly, Unionist supporters might invite us to recoil at the prospect of further economic instability with newly-minted and untested independence on top of all the post-Brexit uncertainty. The issue here, though, isn’t about further instability; it’s that the hard Brexiters who now control the UK economy seemed cheerfully insouciant about risking everything while seeming impervious to its social consequences.

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Like the expected repercussions of the millennium bug in 2000 some of the more apocalyptic presentiments of Brexit might yet prove to be fanciful. This, though, doesn’t diminish the most sinister aspect of Brexit: that its most fervent disciples seemed not to care one way or the other. Worse; they were prepared to lie and deceive to maintain any convenient fiction. All that mattered was this: that they would be handed a fragile, softened-up, punch-drunk version of Britain, one that could thus be moulded much more easily into that 18th century caricature of itself that exists in the scrambled dreams of Jacob and the European Research Group.

Next Wednesday marks the fifth anniversary of the independence referendum and the Yes movement is entitled to think that it’s in a good place. With each newly-revealed misdemeanour of the Brexiters support for independence grows among those who weren’t persuaded of it first time around. At the base of this, I think, are questions of trust and decency. The three Scottish judges who deemed the prorogation of Parliament to be illegal did so ultimately because they simply didn’t believe Boris Johnson. They virtually accused a sitting Prime Minister of lying to his Queen as a means of escaping the scrutiny of the sovereign parliament he is sworn to uphold and from whom he derives his power. This bore all the imprints of a political coup; now we know it actually was one. If they can do this; if they can even contemplate doing this then all the other democratic institutions that underpin the way we reach decisions and make choices must be considered fair game too.

When left-wing revolutions have occurred elsewhere in the world radicals try to justify them, even when they have withered under human corruption. “At least they were attempted for the benefit of the many,” they say. But what lies in store when a revolution is staged by the few who also control our security services? There is a reason why social mobility is scarcer at the top of the UK military than in any other of the UK’s social and cultural jurisdictions.

The conduct of Brexit, deal or no deal, has permitted the SNP to claim the social and cultural arguments. Their politicians at Westminster, led by the formidable duo of Joanna Cherry and Ian Blackford, have been the driving forces of the anti-Brexit alliance and have provided it with moral purpose. This is symbolic of another rather more perverse irony: that the hallowed institutions of UK identity and pride will be respected and upheld more in an independent Scotland than in a UK ruled by the Johnson/Cummings/Rees-Mogg axis. Even if a deal of sorts is concluded in the next four weeks this remains the most likely outcome of the next General Election.

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In Scotland, the ability of the Unionist parties to oppose independence has also diminished. Ruth Davidson, their most eloquent advocate has retired because she too couldn’t trust her boss. The Scots Tory MPs who arrived at Westminster on her coat-tails have since been exposed as indolent popinjays of a stamp much more reactionary and right-wing than their Holyrood counterparts, and that’s saying something. Five years ago, too, it seemed that the Labour Party in Scotland had dredged the lowest depths after its leadership turned it into a footstool of the UK Conservatives. Somehow they have since found a lower place and have learned nothing.

The sight this week of Anas Sarwar sharing a platform with Gordon Brown was wretchedly appropriate. One of these men destroyed himself in an unhealthy obsession with being Prime Minister; the other has lately become obsessive about leading Labour in Scotland. To proclaim a message of Hope Not Hate when attacking the Yes movement is cheap, nasty and unworthy of either. It’s a sign of desperation and of itself proof that neither is – or ever was – cut out for mature leadership. They know and we know that you only need to worry about nationalist movements when they are being proclaimed in countries that are already independent.

If independence is delivered, and we are closer to it right now than we ever were at any time during the first referendum, then it will have been gifted by a British elite which was unable to camouflage its true nature. Thus, the biggest threat to independence may yet come from within the SNP itself. The cybernats who have been made convenient scapegoats (often by the SNP machine) for the ills of political discourse are nothing of the sort. Instead it’s a toxic troupe of silent assassins which have taken root inside the SNP, under the influence of the Scottish Greens, who could damage the Yes movement. They have previously tried to destroy the careers of Joanna Cherry and Joan McAlpine, two of the SNP’s most able operators. Now they are attempting to create a hostile environment for those whose religious beliefs they don’t seem able to tolerate. The SNP leadership must isolate this faction before they cause greater damage when it really matters.