When financial scandals involving the Conservative Party occur, one facet of them always surprises me: that people still retain the capacity to be shocked and outraged. In the last four years, we’ve had three: all of them emblematic of a credo and mindset which truly define what it means to be a Tory.

This world view proceeds on the basis of absolute submission to the principle that you can never have enough money; that this concept is a sacred one and that, as such, nothing can be considered immoral in its pursuit.

When it became evident that senior Tory activists had turned 10 Downing Street into Animal House: The Covid Years there was widespread and incandescent disbelief. This was entirely understandable. During this time, most families had been unable to visit sick relatives or bury dead ones properly owing to social distancing requirements.

Yet, the immorality and contempt for common decency implicit in such conduct was eclipsed by other practices and behaviours which were far more insidious. This was when some Tory ministers and party officials exploited the pandemic as a means of either getting rich quick or adding to their existing fortunes.

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Establishing a system of pandemic insider trading that enabled friends and party donors rapidly to establish companies specialising in PPE equipment surely requires a touch of genius. These people aren’t stupid. They must have known that when protective equipment is being made or supplied by with no specialist knowledge that it risked compromising the health of the front-line medical staff who would be wearing it. If ever a practice defined the phrase ‘profit before people’ this was it.

The recent glut of revelations that a gambling den was quickly formed within Number Ten to make a quick buck ‘speculating’ on the date of the General Election were seedy and iniquitous. Does this party consider anything to be sacred? Is their sense of entitlement so embedded in their psyche that they really do think anything goes in the pursuit of financial gain?

Presumably, it’s this type of malfeasance which compelled a group of senior public officials from the law, business and civic governance to produce a blueprint this week for raising standards in public life as a means of restoring public trust in the political process.

This group want to see “new systems for managing conflicts of interest and lobbying; improving regulation of post-government employment; ensuring appointments to the Lords are only made on merit”. They would also end prime ministerial patronage in the honours system.

Their concerns follow predictions by pollsters that the election on July 4 could see the lowest turnout in modern British history. Recent polling by Techne UK, according to The Independent, found that even with the heightened interest an election campaign brings, around 20 per cent of voters have already decided to sit this one out.

Politicians 'are not normal people'Politicians 'are not normal people' (Image: free)

You could also issue a set of specifically Scottish guidelines to help restore trust in this country’s politics. My top three would be: politicians to be barred from joining lobbying companies for a period of 10 years following their exit from Holyrood; compel lobbying firms to appear before public committees to answer questions about their clients’ political activities; ban all serving, professional politicians from attending pop concerts and football matches as though they are ‘normal people’.

Most of them (and I can’t stress this enough) are not normal people. They are narcissists with borderline personality disorders and messiah complexes possessing psychopathic tendencies. In Scotland, this is chiefly manifest in a desire to conceal from the public their multifarious public expenditure catastrophes allied with a contempt for any bodies seeking the truth behind them.

The trust issues that have utterly destroyed Rishi Sunak’s chances of regaining the keys to Number 10 are also evident at the heart of the SNP and the clown show that comprises most of their Westminster group.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the presence of John Swinney at the front of last weekend’s Pride march. In doing so, these frauds have betrayed tens of thousands of their supporters who had been conned into believing that the SNP’s principle driver was a desire to campaign for independence. Mr Swinney and his party acolytes had even forsaken an authentic pro-independence event to attend the Pride March. These people are at the kid-on.

During this event, the First Minister was photographed holding a banner in support of banning conversion therapy. This comes weeks after the Cass Review had shown how prescribing puberty blockers and hormone therapy for vulnerable young people risked damaging their long-term mental and physical health and was itself tantamount to conversion therapy. Yet, the First Minister of Scotland is enthusiastic about criminalising parents who would protect their children from such practices.

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Scotland’s spineless displays at the Euros have been described as ‘an embarrassment’ to our country. Yet, we currently have a First Minister who is afraid to define what a woman is and would rather stand with those who have spent the last five years intimidating feminists and lesbians expressing concerns that their sex-based rights are being dismantled. Mr Swinney and his party have been embarrassing Scotland for several years now.

Earlier this year, they introduced Hate Crime legislation, the most draconian measure of thought control existing anywhere in western Europe. Along with their former partners in government, the Scottish Greens, they sought to justify this by telling the world that the Scottish people were violent, hate-filled gargoyles who were for the watching, 24/7. But, hey, please do come and visit our wonderful wee country and invest in it.

During this campaign, Mr Swinney and his Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn have been flogging independence like a couple of American prohibition-era whisky peddlers. The SNP’s ability to keep going back to the indy well and selling it to their most gullible supporters has been one of the great confidence tricks in modern UK politics.

On Leaders' Question Time last week, Mr Swinney seriously suggested that if the SNP won a majority of seats at this election he would press to open negotiations with Sir Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak about holding another referendum. This was another indication of this party’s contempt for ordinary voters. He knows it won’t happen and he’s been told often it won’t happen. He really does think we are idiots.