THE SNP are ever watchful lest those vile Westminster Tories come like thieves in the night to steal away some of Scotland’s devolved powers. Curiously though, Nicola Sturgeon isn’t too fussy about interfering in the devolved government of her next-door neighbours. This week the First Minister took part freely in a power-grab of her own and encouraged her Westminster MPs joyously to fill their boots.

Thus they took advantage of Northern Ireland’s current power-sharing impasse to seek to impose new laws that neither the people of this province nor its representatives have ever wanted. They participated in the hijacking of a bill to keep Northern Ireland running in the absence of devolved government by using it to liberalise abortion law there and to legalise same-sex marriage. This was a coup carried out by the UK’s metropolitan elite and the SNP’s role in it was hypocritical and shameful.

Nationalist MPs have always chosen never to vote on devolved matters affecting other parts of the UK, being aware that to do so undermines its opposition to any erosion of Holyrood’s devolved powers. Ian Blackford, the leader of the SNP’s Westminster group, airily waved away such piffling concerns. He said that the current uncertainty in Northern Ireland politics permitted his MPs to vote on amendments to the proposed bill. It will pass into law if Northern Ireland’s main parties can’t restore power-sharing by October 31.

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Let’s talk frankly here. None of this stemmed from any authentic concern for the future of politics in Northern Ireland. If the amendments had been about any other issue the SNP would have stuck to what remains of its moral principles and kept their distance. Indeed, if this had been about putting in place special measures to combat the effects of a No-Deal Brexit in Northern Ireland, you might even make a case for the SNP using the ‘special circumstances’ justification to vote on them. This though, was about something more sinister. It was about imposing a social and cultural diktat on a country which has always rejected the secularist and anti-Christian orthodoxy which fuels the political agenda in Scotland. The SNP chose to wait until Scotland’s neighbour was at its weakest and in need of genuine assistance to insult and humiliate them.

In any other constituent part of the UK there would have been an outcry if legislators from outwith their jurisdiction had sought to drive through changes in these sensitive areas without any consultation. There was no prior discussion with any of Northern Ireland’s elected representatives and no notice that such changes were being mooted. Instead they chose to treat this country with utter contempt and accord it the serf status that the British Empire once reserved for its minion states. The SNP, self-proclaimed guardians of enlightened, inclusive and progressive politics, were part of this.

They must have known that 64 per cent of people in Northern Ireland, according to a recent ComRes poll, are opposed to the UK making a legislative intervention such as this. The Lib-Dem peer, Lord David Alton, speaking in the Lords this week, said: “We have always treated Northern Ireland not as having to be in uniformity but as being different and having different cultural values. The law on abortion in Northern Ireland, with its distinct traditions and identity, is something about which many people in Northern Ireland hold a very different view from the views of the English metropolitan classes.”

These classes also exist in Scotland and drive the Holyrood agenda. Part of this is conducting a well-organised and well-funded campaign of legal harassment against those who profess authentic Christianity and not the platitudinous and fey facsimile of it that our Government would like it to be. Thus, anyone who holds the belief that an unborn child is the most vulnerable member of the human race and has an equal right to life as all other humans is dismissed as extremist and sexist. Those who believe that the sacrament of marriage is reserved for a man and a woman are hounded by the SNP’s social media jackals and accused of homophobia. Each is a chillingly well-constructed and implacably-pursued lie.

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Many Christians were among those who voted for Scotland to be an independent country. We don’t believe that Scotland has a higher set of values than England or even that the country necessarily will be better governed or be economically better off. We just believe that independence is Scotland’s natural state; it’s what God intended this country to be, if it’s still permissible to deploy a divine lexicon in modern Scotland. The SNP though seems bent on harrying many of its supporters to a place where they are forced to choose between the party and their faith. For many, the Christian faith is the bedrock of their political beliefs. In a secular society we recognise the primacy of the state but we expect the state in return to let us practise our faith without retribution.

Instead, we are seeing the emergence of a hostile environment for Christians where midwives are disciplined for refusing to carry out abortions; social workers likewise for refusing to place children with same-sex couples and church members are barred from sitting on local authority bodies. In the background is the constant drumbeat of attacks on Catholic schools. Diversity? Inclusiveness? There are many in the SNP who are strangers to these concepts when they apply to Scotland’s Christian community.

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There are also profound political consequences flowing from the SNP’s hypocrisy and cowardice in its Northern Ireland power grab. This will haunt them in any future referendum. It suggests that its leadership is more concerned with imposing its militant social ideology on Scotland than with making it independent. It’s currently seeking to persuade un-decided voters about the advantages that come with independence even as it stamps all over the independence of its neighbours. In doing so they have just provided a gift to Unionists and betrayed the wider Yes movement.