I HAVE a great deal of sympathy with Liz Truss’ exasperated outburst last week that we should all simply ignore Nicola Sturgeon. Like all unionists, I too wish that Ms Sturgeon and her party would just go away and be quiet. Truss was cheered to the rafters for her angry, impatient, fighting talk. The unionist diehards are desperate for a leader to talk tough to the nationalists.

But no matter how tempting it is, to adopt such an approach would be a grievous error. When I point this out on Twitter I am swiftly accused of appeasement (or worse). But the BritNats on Twitter are as unrepresentative of and as mistaken about mainstream Scottish opinion as their mirror image, the famous CyberNats.

My mantra is simple, and I learned it the very first day I met the newly appointed Alistair Darling, in Better Together’s original HQ, on Blythswood Square in Glasgow (they later decamped to bigger offices further down Sauchiehall Street). “We win this by being the reasonable ones”, Alistair said. He was right then and the same core truth holds now, nearly ten years on.

It is perfectly true that unionists have a choice – Alistair Darling’s style is not for everyone. There is an alternative to the “softly softly” approach which Darling, David Cameron, Ruth Davidson and so many others have preferred. That alternative, of a more muscular unionism, is what Liz Truss was gesturing towards when she said that the SNP and its leadership should simply be ignored.

It is the approach adopted by George Galloway and his merry band of hardcore unionist trolls. But, as election after election has grimly shown, it is an approach which appeals only to the tiny minority of Scots who spend their time bashing keyboards in idle political fury, not to the large majority of voters who are as repelled and repulsed by the extremists in red, white and blue as they are by the frenzied Saltire-waving crowds Tommy Sheridan and his ilk attract.

These, my friends, are the people in Scottish politics who should rightly be ignored – as indeed they are, by the voters, in election after election.

Liz Truss could choose to go down this path if she wants. She could do all the things the muscular unionists are calling for. She could pass legislation making it clear that no secession referendum can be held in Scotland without Westminster’s consent.

She could go further, and clarify in law that it would be unlawful for such consent ever to be given unless and until there was first a credible plan for what the currency, the trading relations, and the border controls of an independent Scotland would be.

She could amend the Scotland Act to withdraw powers from Holyrood. She could step directly into areas of domestic Scottish policy and take them over on the grounds that the SNP administration has manifestly failed (as it has failed, for example, on drugs deaths, on economic growth, on schools and on so much more). She could make it clear that ministers in devolved administrations spending time (and taxpayers’ money) on foreign policy is unlawful.

She could, in short, undermine devolution, take steps to reverse it, and move towards overturning it, when the time is right. There are those who would cheer her on every inch of the way – indeed, there are those who have devoted recent columns to setting all of this out as some sort of Trussed-up manifesto.

It is – all of it – tempting and I have, with all of it, a good deal of sympathy. But the temptation must be resisted, for it would be an error to take any of these steps. Why? Because we win this thing – this long war of constitutional attrition – by being the reasonable ones, not by starting a needless fight with the SNP the outcome of which is as likely to favour them as it is us.

Appeasement, after all, to use the term of abuse thrown about by the muscular unionists, is working. Support for independence has not grown and is stagnating. Support for a repeat referendum on independence any time soon is shrinking. It is the SNP who are starting to look unreasonable in pressing ahead with an unwanted referendum, not the unionists who cleave to the line that now is not the time.

I share all of the frustrations of BritNat cyber-warriors that the SNP are still miles in front. I share all their anger that the SNP wilfully refuse to deploy the Scottish Parliament’s panoply of powers to reform and reboot Scotland for the better. I share their loathing of Nicola Sturgeon’s grandstanding on the international stage whilst, at home, she presides over murderous rates of drugs deaths, failing schools, low growth, poor productivity, crumbling infrastructure, and economic inertia.

But the answer to all of that lies in the ballot box, not in revising the statute book. Ms Sturgeon’s opponents need to figure out how to beat her in an election, not drool at the prospect of changing the law to clip her wings and lock her in a cage.

Liz Truss’ predecessor as prime minister flirted with muscular unionism but wiser heads prevailed upon him and even Boris Johnson came to understand that its attractions were false. I have no idea who Truss is going to turn to once she has entered No 10 for advice on the Union but, whoever they are, if they have any sense, they will not be enticed by the fools’ gold of seeking to silence Nicola Sturgeon, still less of ignoring her.

Constitutional politics requires statecraft, not quick fixes. It requires patience, a thick skin, and an unerring ability not to rise to the bait – not to give in to temptation. The SNP are past masters at it. And they are watching, and waiting, hoping that Liz Truss is impetuous enough to junk all that and to flex her unionist muscles.