As Scotland continues to boast the riots that hit much of the wider UK didn’t materialise here, it’s worth asking ourselves not why, but what if? If thuggery, wanton destruction, looting, assaults and violence against communities and police officers had occurred - how would we have responded?

In the past few years Scotland has passed legislation that flies completely in the face of the police and justice tactics deployed in response to the riots. Our politicians sit in circles patting themselves on the back over how much fairer our justice system is, while those working in, or wading through its tortuously slow reality have entirely different experiences. We have more alternatives to prison, more diversions from prosecution, fewer people held in police custody and fewer being remanded pending trial. None of which were even considered for restoring order south of the Border.

We are forever being told Scotland is a progressive country (whatever that means) yet those who would be first to permanently tattoo their libertarian values onto their foreheads were quick to show just how “right-wing” and “intolerant” they were prepared to be when the chips were down.

A robust police response was not enough - some good old-fashioned police brutality was needed. They wanted heads knocked, and hard aggressive tactics from the bobbies behind the shields. They wanted homes raided, kids taken into care. They wanted people locked up - lots of people, and for a very long time indeed. They wanted mobile phones, laptops, entire internet histories searched. No word of state overreach here. But that wasn’t enough. Strip them of their citizenships - deport them - as demands, they were all there.

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The euphoria when Shep took a chunk out of some eejit's bahookie, or when the hero taunting the shield line was knocked onto his, would have seen mass rally’s outside police stations if the ne’er do wells were doing so in the name of something they happened to agree with. Sometimes, we’re told, the ends justify the means. Some “minor” lawlessness is too often squared away as the price to pay whenever a new fashionable perceived injustice comes along.

Keir Starmer soaked up praise for how HE responded to the challenges. To be fair the tone he set was important and his wholesale support for policing was welcome in the face of the hostilities. However, the independence of the police and judiciary were not suspended for direct prime ministerial rule and the real praise should be directed to those in uniform and who made the justice system work with an efficiency denied to countless others daily. It’s amazing how things considered broken can be made to work when there is political will to do so.

It turns out remanding those who plead not guilty into custody pending trial is popular and heaven forfend that anyone considered this punishment in advance of conviction. That argument only applies when we are feeling particularly righteous. It also transpires no one really cares about the brain development or future life chances of the under-25s when jailing them for years, and the deterrent value of prison was suddenly more important than stigmatising sentences, overcrowding, and rehabilitation. The two-tier policing many had been shouting about for years was now a figment of the imagination, which is as curious as the police and political protestations it exists at all.

It is undeniable policing is different for different threats and events. It has to be. The policing of a Scotland-England rugby match is incomparable to that of a football fixture involving the Auld Enemy. The Royal National Mod will have half dozen or so police officers dedicated to it but a music festival will see police drugs dogs and undercover officers mixing amongst revellers.

Policing is inconsistent, always has been - always will be. If you’re a youngster from one of Scotland’s deprived areas you will see and interact with the police far more than if you’re a young fellow from Bearsden or Giffnock. Look at the police response to Covid. Rural and suburban Scotland had totally different experiences to inner cities and schemes. If you were poor and climbing the walls in your airless flat - the polis were there to make sure you didn’t step out of line. But if you were enjoying your BBQs with neighbours on the other side of the fence in any of the leafy ‘burbs - you weren’t really hurting anyone were you? This is where the real unfairness lies, and is two-tier policing in its purest and ugliest form.

We all like to believe we are experts in policingWe all like to believe we are experts in policing (Image: Newsquest)

It is a truism there are three things everyone is an expert in: how to manage your sporting team of choice; how others should parent their children; and how the police should police. An eternal problem for the police is people see what they see and sometimes only see what they want to see. No two protests or demonstrations are policed the same, but when it comes to rioting the police response is inevitably one of meeting force with overwhelming force as the direct alternative is anarchy. And whilst the police doesn’t help itself when those vandalising in the name of one cause are seen to be treated differently from those vandalising in the name of another, by and large it gets it right far more often than it gets it wrong.

Despite persistent allegations to the contrary Scotland’s police and judiciary remain free from political interference. That’s why for all its imperfections we can be certain that if the rioting which blighted the rest of the UK came north, the police and justice response would have been as hard and ruthless as it was elsewhere.

Many like to believe they are paragons of virtue when it comes to how they want our justice system to work, but when trouble comes knocking they burn their Che Guevara t-shirts and demand the short, sharp, shock, treatment which hauls criminals of the streets and into prison with such gusto that it would have brought a tear to Margaret Thatcher’s eye.

Calum Steele is a former General Secretary of The Scottish Police Federation