If you wanted to assess how disfigured the Yes movement for Scottish independence has become then behold some of the responses to Nicola Sturgeon’s arrest yesterday. A video clip appeared on Twitter of a group of women dancing to Jailhouse Rock, gleeful, it seemed, that Scotland’s former First Minister had been questioned by Police Scotland in connection with its ongoing investigation into SNP finances.

Several of the faces in this group were familiar to many who have been campaigning for Scottish independence these last 20 years or so. They are feminists to their core, having campaigned for women’s equality – and suffered for it – long before their hounding by those trans activists seeking now to prevent them from speaking inconvenient truths.

The work of these women and their allies had helped form the bedrock reinforcing the Yes campaign at a time when Nicola Sturgeon was picking up her first pay cheque and receiving her first pension contribution as a professional politician.

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The voluntary hours they had spent campaigning for Yes long before it was seized upon as a juicy career option by an emerging salon class of party opportunists had helped make it possible for Ms Sturgeon to begin her storied and lucrative rise within the independence sector.

Until a few years ago, they had been her staunchest defenders and would have walked over hot coals for her and the cause of Scottish independence. Now, in their eyes, Ms Sturgeon stands accused of conduct far worse than any of those matters currently being investigated by Police Scotland.

The story of what has transpired within the SNP to cause women who had been among her most devoted acolytes now to dance at her political funeral rites tells us more than anything else why independence has effectively been killed in this generation.

The news of Ms Sturgeon’s arrest had occurred as these women were attending a screening of Adult Human Female, a documentary exploring the clash between women’s sex-based rights and some of the demands made by trans activists. On several previous attempts at screening this film these women and others had been spat upon, threatened with violence and bullied, often by masked male fetishists channelling deep-rooted misogyny. These brave women hold Ms Sturgeon responsible for orchestrating a climate of fear inside the SNP for those who believe that sex is immutable and that transwomen are transwomen. Until Ms Sturgeon’s very sudden political denouement she and those regressive fanatics who have hollowed out this absurdly dysfunctional party had hoped that the wider Scottish public would remain blissfully ignorant at what was being enacted on their behalf.

And then Isla Bryson and a slew of other violent males emerged who were seeking to pass themselves off as women. Nicola Sturgeon and those who insisted on pressing ahead regardless with all the measures contained in the GRA Bill were their unwitting, but very foolish, hand-maidens.

At the same time as those adult human females were dancing to the Jailhouse Rock another group of responses were evident on social media. These could be described broadly as belonging to the SNP’s Scarecrow Wing. They are a feckless confection of parliamentary wage thieves and fake actors who make up the SNP’s drone class; all the roasters and rockets of the SNP’s Danse Macabre.

They were led by elected politicians whose incoherent and rambling soliloquies were emblematic of what also ails this party: a disturbing tendency to promote and reinforce people whom you wouldn’t trust to get the messages. They were by no means the only ones, only the most egregiously daft.

Some wanted all internal dissent quelled while others seemed not to have grasped the finer detail of the law of contempt, throwing themselves at the feet of their old boss like weeping adolescents at a Westlife concert.

Other parties also have people like these in their ranks and they manage them as best they can, assigning babysitters to show them what buttons to push when it comes to a parliamentary vote. In the SNP though, they represent a much larger and more vociferous cohort. They have made a graven image of Ms Sturgeon, viewing her as a cult leader possessing ex cathedra infallibility.

It’s reasonable to conclude that by filling the higher echelons of the SNP with such drones, Ms Sturgeon ensured that her writ would always run. Soon, the party’s NEC also came to be overrun by them so that, under the chivvying influence of her husband Peter Murrell, there would never be any attempt to criticise her.

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Perhaps if the SNP hadn’t been shorn of all independent voices some of the matters currently being investigated by the police might have been dealt with openly and in good order rather than in secrecy and on pain of being cast out if Omerta wasn’t adhered to.

There are still others who believe that if Nicola Sturgeon and her husband and the party treasurer are not eventually charged then everything is fine and that it was all a plot by MI5. However, no matter what happens it’s clear that this party has been an open sewer, attracting a lumpen idiocracy who can be relied upon to look the other way when any red flags are raised. And besides; why would the forces of unionism waste any time and resources undermining the cause of independence when the SNP’s own leader and her acolytes have done such a good job of saving them the trouble?

There might still have been a chance for Humza Yousaf to begin repairing the damage were it not for the fact that he has since added to a swollen Cabinet some who make people Ms Sturgeon’s old guard Nobel laureates in comparison.

It’s almost possible to feel for Mr Yousaf in being saddled with the detritus of Ms Sturgeon and Mr Murrell’s ruinous regime – were it not for the fact that he thinks the Scottish Greens in government are an asset and not the very expensive calamity they’ve been since day one of their bizarre elevations.

Mr Yousaf has no record of even modest achievement in anything he’s undertaken in his anointed political career. His CV resembles that of his predecessor. Yet, similar to her, he has removed from the room all the adults who might have helped him rescue independence from her folly.