Democracy, said Plato, is a charming form of government full of variety and disorder. Two-and-a-half thousand years later, his home of Greece experienced variety, for sure, and under the governments of the far left Syriza party, much disorder.

Last week, though, The Economist newspaper named Greece its country of the year. It is only a decade since Greece effectively collapsed under the debt crisis, with its politics tacking to the extremes of left and right, and with the former making it into government.

But Greece has shown us that there is always a tomorrow. It has just re-elected the New Democrats, an economically liberal, pro-Western government and has won over the people with sensible economic and social reforms. It still has variety, as Plato lauded, but less disorder.

Scotland today is not Greece ten years ago. However, we are decidedly heading towards disorder rather than away from it. We are in the most curious, head-scratching term of office that I have witnessed in the 22 years I have been involved, in one way or another, in Scottish politics.

The former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her Deputy John Swinney brought the Greens into government (officially on its periphery, but in reality at its very heart), not for their environmental or social policy credentials, but for their numbers.

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The previous Parliament had been fractious and toxic, with votes of no confidence offering the tangible prospect of Cabinet Secretaries losing their jobs, and Ms Sturgeon and Mr Swinney decided that no price was too high a price to pay.

A small handful of SNP MSPs considered it a mistake at the time, primarily because they identified a risk of leaking regional votes to their own partners. They did not predict, however, the extent of the Greens’ influence in almost all policy areas, and the impact it would have on their hard-earned reputation as a credible, sensible, reliable party of government.

This is a party which came to power nearly 17 years ago as a feasible alternative to Labour, and became seen as a dependable administration through to the independence referendum seven years later. The transition from Alex Salmond to Ms Sturgeon appeared relatively seamless and, although it was clear that Ms Sturgeon was steadily moving the party leftwards, there was absolutely no perception of incompetence.

Today, though, almost all of the major issues causing the SNP the most public trouble, from tax to gender recognition to the collapse of unreformed public services to the failure to build roads, can find their roots in the coalition with the Greens.

A growing number of SNP MSPs are severely discombobulated. In some cases worried for their seats and their own future. However, in fairness, the greater impression is one of worry for their party rather than for themselves.

They should be worried. This is a road well travelled. Most pertinently for the SNP, it was travelled in Quebec, perhaps the place in the world most comparable to Scotland in terms of its modern nationalist story.

Witnessing the rise and fall of the Parti Québécois (PQ), the traditional party of nationalism (sovereignty, as Quebecers term it), has eerie relatability for the SNP. The party won massive majorities in the wake of the unsuccessful referenda of 1980 and 1995, just as the SNP did in 2015 and (nearly) in 2016, in the wake of the 2014 independence poll. Throughout this century, though, the PQ found themselves talking a different language to the people.

The Herald: Nicola Sturgeon was behind the Green dealNicola Sturgeon was behind the Green deal (Image: free)

Having had a razor sharp political antennae, they simply lost it. In general election after general election, and in leadership election after leadership election, the PQ talked to itself about sovereignty long after the people had moved on to a newer concept. Today, the PQ has only four seats in the 125-seat Assemblée nationale du Québec, of similar size to the 129-seat Holyrood parliament in Edinburgh.

As the PQ was talking to itself, the voters were engaged in a conversation with a new party, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), founded by a former PQ cabinet minister, François Legault. M. Legault is a nationalist, but does not believe there should be another referendum on sovereignty. He, instead, agitates for more power from Ottawa within the Canadian union. His unofficial mantra is “you don’t have to love Canada, but you don’t have to leave it either”.

The CAQ is focussed on public service reform; investment in and decentralisation of the education and health services, within the construct of a capitalist, centrist economic policy focussed on economic growth.

Only 12 years old, the party now has 40 per cent of the vote and a larger parliamentary majority than the PQ had in its prime. The CAQ is where the Quebecers are. And the Canadians, for that matter.

The Scottish comparison ends, though, before the CAQ is born. Any reader who is expecting me to say, “and here we hae Alba” is, I am afraid, set to be disappointed. Alba is not the CAQ. The Scottish CAQ does not yet exist.

But it could. It is presumptuous to call Scottish independence dead, but it is unofficially moribund, with elections in 2024 to Westminster, and in 2026 to Holyrood, probably making its moribund status official. It is highly unlikely that independence will be a realistic prospect in the next half-century.

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And, with us perhaps re-entering the era of Labour, united at Westminster and Holyrood, the gap for a new party, patriotically Scottish, welcoming nationalists and unionists with independence off the table, laser-focussed on public service reform and economic growth, is wide and deep.

I could reel off dozens of MSPs from the SNP and the Conservatives who would fit and thrive in the Scottish Future Coalition, to borrow the CAQ’s translation. And I could name a few who could lead it too.

It may seem fanciful, but then so did the CAQ before M. Legault decided it was not. M. Legault was the sort of dreamer that George Bernard Shaw, and later Robert F. Kennedy, had in mind when they said: “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

• Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters