Let’s start as I do not mean to go on: I agree with Ross Greer. If you’re going to hold a TV debate with the Scottish parties, it makes no sense to exclude the Greens. They’ve been in government, their record will probably get a right slagging in the debate, and so, as Mr Greer says, they should be there and have a right to reply. He has now written to STV to complain and he’s right to do so and I agree with him.

The question is though: why are they so desperate to be there? A small and reducing number of people get their news and views from TV, and TV debates matter way less than they once did. But there’s something about the format – lights on, sweat forming on the brow, one word away from a cock-up – that can be revealing in the way a highly controlled photo opportunity or Tik-Tok video can’t be. It can all go wrong and that’s what makes it appealing and necessary.

However, I worry a bit – good as the TV debates can occasionally be – that the party leaders have got much better in recent years at parroting their repeat-lines, the ones they practise with their aides. This is particularly a problem in the Scottish scene which has moved on much less than it has in other parts of the UK. Swinney may have replaced Yousaf who replaced Sturgeon but much of what they say is remarkably similar to ten years ago. The same goes for the Tories, which means everyone can avoid the more fundamental questions, the stuff that goes deeper.

Case in point: I’ve just had a letter from my prospective Conservative MP, Martin Dowey, who tells me he wants to “move on from the SNP’s obsession with independence”. But he also says I must vote Conservative to prevent the SNP “trying to plunge us all back into a debate about separating Scotland from the rest of the UK”. It’s effectively the same strategy Ruth Davidson used in 2014 even though we’re ten years on and the chance of independence is much reduced, remote even. Keep talking about independence to stop them talking about independence!

The question for Douglas Ross therefore is how to talk about conservatism and move the subject on. In recent days, quite rightly, he’s been focusing on Michael Matheson and the iPad scandal (and we’ll hear more from him on it in the debate no doubt). But there’s a broad swathe of right-leaning centrist conservative Scottish opinion that wants to see Mr Ross start to frame Scottish Conservatism as more than just the opposite of the SNP. Otherwise, we will never, ever move on from independence centre-stage.

Read more: Mark Smith: ‘We want to do more’: lessons from a train trip with Mr Swinney

Read more: Mark Smith: Compulsory national service. At last, the Tories have a good idea

Sadly, the SNP are in the same trap, only on the other side, which has led them, like the Conservatives, to also talk about independence like it’s still 2014 (just around the corner, one more push, etc) and to defend someone or something simply because they’re on the Yes side. This has led to the spectacle, the hideous one, of John Swinney pretending it’s not Mr Matheson that’s the problem but the committee system. In fact, the problem with committees at Holyrood isn’t that they're too powerful, it’s that they aren’t powerful enough.

All of this is perfectly legitimate chat for the TV debates – and it will be interesting to hear Mr Swinney explain why there shouldn’t be a recall system, as there is at Westminster, to allow constituents to kick out rule-breaking politicians. But the question for Mr Swinney – and I assume he realises the old mantras aren’t working much anymore and a new strategy is needed – is similar to the question for the Tories: how do you remodel your offer for an age in which independence does not (for now?) have the dominance it once did.

Perhaps the First Minister could try this: instead of saying, as he did the other day, that the SNP's strategy for independence has not changed and is still based on winning a majority of seats at the general election, perhaps he could talk longer-term and more realistically about a couple of things. First, he could talk more realistically about where the cause for independence actually is (no one believes the “majority of seats” stuff). And second, maybe he could talk more realistically about what independence would actually mean.

He could try it out in tonight’s debate if independence comes up (it will). He could say it wouldn’t really mean what his most ardent supporters think it would and that changing the constitutional status of a country does not necessarily change people’s sense of cultural, social and personal identity. He could also acknowledge that, even if he won a referendum one day, the ties with England would still be strong and our ability to be autonomous would be limited. It would be independence as a potential practical reality rather than a panacea and it might just attract a few more of the undecideds. Mr Swinney might also consider saying “self-government” rather than “independence” for the same reason.

But if he was ever willing to acknowledge that independence does not have the primacy it had 10 years ago, or even two years ago, and it he was ever willing to talk to people in a different way about it, then he’s also going to have to start to demonstrate progress on other issues and there are signs he gets this. He said the other day, for example, that he was going to make sure his party built support for independence by concentrating on issues such as the cost of living and that seems to me to be putting things the right way round: try to tackle the cost of living, show that you’re good at it, and perhaps support for independence will follow.

But it then brings us to one of the biggest questions that needs to be asked at tonight’s debate, and I’m sure it will be: what is Mr Swinney actually doing about what he says is his most important objective? Check out the quotes. Mr Swinney: eradication of child poverty is my single most important objective. Mr Yousaf: addressing child poverty is at the very heart of my priorities. Ms Sturgeon: tackling child poverty is a key priority for my government. Pretty clear, I’d say.

The Herald:

And yet we had this news at the weekend: the Scottish Government is set to hand back £450million of EU money it’s failed to spend on key economic and anti-poverty projects. The money would have gone on schemes to boost employment, training and social inclusion but the programme closes this month which means the funding is almost certainly going to be unspent and lost. Beggars belief doesn’t it? But it also brings up a question that Mr Swinney needs to be asked tonight: how does handing back £450m square with poverty being your single most important objective?

How will he answer it? Probably by saying once more that eradicating poverty is his primary objective (and so we go round the mulberry bush). But perhaps something will actually happen in the TV debate. Perhaps one of the leaders will score a hit. Perhaps one of them will mis-speak and we’ll get a story. And perhaps I’ll get over my genuine disappointment that the Greens aren’t appearing too. Because then, perhaps, someone could have asked them this: why are you expelling people from your party for expressing perfectly legal and reasonable opinions?