Scots are fortunate in that they have two governments to look after their interests.

We have the UK Government with a clear remit to look after matters for the UK as a whole including Scotland, and the Scottish Government which has a wide range of powers and responsibilities - health, education and transport being examples - devolved to it and a decent financial settlement to pay for them.

What works best for the people of Scotland is when these two governments work together for the common good. Both have democratic legitimacy, neither has a monopoly right to speak for everybody in Scotland Unfortunately, the two governments have rather different objectives. The UK Government wants to do its best for Scotland as part of the UK and it wants devolution to work. The current Scottish Government’s agenda is quite different, it resents the UK Government, doesn’t want to work with it and wants devolution to fail.

The SNP, having decisively lost the referendum in 2014, despite a question biased in favour of separation, a gerrymandered electorate and a deluge of propaganda (remember the billions of oil revenues we were going to get?) had a decision to make.

It could have gone the honest route of seeking to govern well within the considerable powers the Scottish Parliament has and to try to persuade Scots, over the long term, that more powers should be progressively devolved to a proven competent and responsible administration.

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The other route, unfortunately, the one which was taken, was to subordinate the roads, the railways, the ferries, the schools and hospitals, the economy and everything else in favour of a relentless focus on breaking up the UK. All words, all actions, every policy was measured against the yardstick of whether it advanced The Cause.

From this error of judgment has flowed two things: incompetent government and a serial habit of picking fights with the UK Government in order to foster grievance and create division.

The appeal to the Supreme Court over where the power to hold a referendum lay was the first. It was a waste of money, everybody knew the answer already but the SNP believed the battle had to be fought and lost in order to foster a laughably-false narrative of Scotland being oppressed. Then we had the gender recognition fiasco. Pushed through the Scottish Parliament when it was plainly not the wish of the people of Scotland. Men who are rapists pretending to be women are an unfortunate by-product but the SNP’s agenda was to show “progressive” Scotland and its parliament cut down by the dreadful UK. An intern in the Scottish civil service could have told the SNP Government that this bill had an impact on the UK as a whole which took it beyond the powers of the Scottish Parliament.

To the relief of the sane majority the Secretary of State for Scotland stepped in to stop the nonsense but Humza Yousaf insists the fight must go back to the courts. Guess what the answer will be.

Next up was the Deposit Return Scheme, promoted by Lorna Slater who came fifth in the election for the Edinburgh North and Leith Constituency in 2021 but has somehow wound up as a minister in the Scottish Government. The aims of the Deposit Return Scheme are not all bad. In fact they are good enough that a scheme should be rolled out across the whole UK - a plan the UK Government is working on.

The same Scottish civil service intern who could have spotted that the Scottish Government was seeking to legislate beyond its powers on the Gender Recognition bill could also have told it ages ago that the DRS (which was in any event a disaster in the making) would need an exemption under the UK Internal Market Act.

The UK Internal Market Act is something the Scottish Government hates because it means it can’t do exactly as it pleases but it is actually something Scots should say a little prayer for every night. The Act creates common standards and a level playing field across the UK market. This gives businesses in the rest of the UK free access to the Scottish market of over five million people and Scottish businesses the same access to a market of over 60 million people. The Act makes Scots winners not losers.

Finally, the decriminalisation of drugs. Drugs are a difficult issue and sadly contribute to Scotland’s suicide rate being the highest in Europe, much higher than in England. There are arguments for decriminalisation but against that one might observe it hasn’t worked with alcohol, a legal drug which we treat as a medical problem and yet which devastates tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives in Scotland.

The tragedy is that the Scottish Government could have done a huge amount to tackle Scotland’s drug problem with the powers it already has but chose instead a collision course with established UK policy.

This must stop. The SNP Government’s job is to govern within the powers it has and to co-operate with the UK Government for the benefit of people in Scotland.