While the SNP tears itself into as many pieces as Fergus Ewing tears Scottish Government documents during public fits of puce-faced rage, the Conservatives are recalibrating their party with a hard shift ever more rightward.

It signals the ground upon which Tories will fight the next election. It won’t be pleasant for Scotland, as the country will find itself in the Conservative’s Culture War crosshairs.

The first hint of what’s to come emerged last month when Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord David Frost – the party’s High Protectors of Brexit – wrote a joint opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph headed "Time Britain returned to its traditional roots", floating the notion of "National Conservatism".

Later this month, senior Tories including Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Michael Gove will join Rees-Mogg, Frost and a smattering of Tory MP groundlings and assorted right-wing culture warriors, at the National Conservatism Conference in London. Folk like the MAGA-loving US senator JD Vance and Sir Richard Dearlove, former MI6 chief, will also be in attendance, along with clergymen to say prayers.

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The conference is the first move in Britain to repackage that old and dangerous trio: Family, Faith, and Flag. Some have already abbreviated "National Conservatism" to "Nat C".

There is a statement of principles that ideological adherents espouse. Under the heading "God and Public Religion", it reads: “No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgement that are found in authentic religious traditions. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals.”

“The Bible should be read … in schools and universities … Public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honoured by the state and other institutions both public and private.”

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Under the heading "Family and Children", it reads: “The traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman … is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilisation. The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations.”

The statement of principles damns “ever more radical forms of sexual licence and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life … are priorities.”

On immigration, it reads: “Restrictive policies may sometimes include a moratorium on immigration.”

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National Conservatism wants to restore “patriotism and courage, honour and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, reason and justice.” The nation state is sanctified in opposition to “universalist ideologies”.

It recommends “a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state”, adding: “Unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end”. Corporations “flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography” are listed as enemies.

But what are "dangerous and addictive substances"? Twitter? Wine? Cigarettes? Sugar? Universities are also in the pillory. They are “globalist in orientation and vehemently opposed to nationalist and conservative ideas. Such institutions do not deserve taxpayer support unless they rededicate themselves to the national interest. Education policy should serve manifest national needs”.

One tenet reads like a thinly-veiled threat to devolution. “Subdivisions” of the nation state “in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign” will lead to “national government [intervening] energetically to restore order”. Clearly, "corruption, lawlessness, immorality and dissolution" are in the eye of the beholder. Tories may say "SNP Scotland", others may say "the governments of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss et al".

The statement says “we emphasise the idea of the nation” in the face of “universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenising, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe”. National Conservatism is “inextricably tied to … the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind people together”. The ideology is “the best path” to defeat “a powerful new Marxism at home”, and “offers a guide which honours Britain’s history”.

It’s surely notable that this indication of where the Tory Party is headed comes at a time when Sir Keir Starmer is taking Labour rightwards, chloroforming progressive left-wing pledges with astonishing alacrity.

What the Tories are doing here is pretty clear. They trashed Britain for the last 13 years. The country is on its knees. Rather than accept culpability, a host of straw-men are being erected upon which blame can be hung: Marxists (though where are these communists to be found?), immigrants, liberals, progressives, universities and students, and those whose lifestyles just aren’t "British" enough.

Read more: The BBC is an active foot soldier for the Tory culture war

To say that this ideological redesign stands in opposition to the SNP is surely the biggest political understatement since "Liz Truss might not last long". The Tories have literally nothing left in terms of policy when it comes to the next election. All they have is the stoking of culture wars, which their servants in the vast bulk of the British media are perfectly happy to abet, because, well, clicks.

As Labour ditches any hint of left-wing policy and holds Brexit closer than a scared child holds their teddy bear, it seems likely that despite the SNP’s miserable track record in government, failure to advance independence, and the scandals and schisms engulfing the party, nationalists will remain the dominant Scottish voice at Holyrood and Westminster.

That makes the Scottish Government the perfect villain for this rising Tory hard right. Scotland will be portrayed as "the land of the woke", where family, faith and flag are sneered at. Devolution will be weaponised; for surely, the cry will go up, the SNP is proof that it’s all gone too far. The culture war will deepen. Policy and politics will stagnate. The lives of ordinary people in both England and Scotland will not improve.

But we will have embarked upon, perhaps, the final metamorphosis of the Tory Party in its journey towards the extremes. Evidently, it could go further right, even further than National Conservatism, but that’s maybe a thought too dark to dwell on.