Party conferences are odd things. By their nature they are a gathering of the faithful who fervently believe in what their party stands for.

This has its pluses. There is a renewal of enthusiasm, an exchange of ideas, the taking of political temperature, shifts in policy.

The vital thing which determines success is that the party can genuinely change. The ability to change is key because the things which are loved by the party faithful are generally less loved by the voting public.

All parties have this problem and if they do not solve it the penalty is to be out of office. Parties need to adapt even if it is difficult to take their core supporters along that journey.

The Conservative party has an advantage over the others in that it is not wedded to any particular set of policies. Some general principles – freedom of the individual, private enterprise, a smaller state – are there but not hard and fast policies. This makes change easier and the Conservative party will need to change a lot before it has any prospect of taking office again.

The Labour party had a larger difficulty, a constitution which enshrined objectives and a series of policies which the public increasingly rejected. State ownership, punitive taxation, union power. These led them to a series of defeats which kept them out of power for 18 years after 1979. Slowly, painfully, Kinnock, Smith and Blair changed Labour to make it electable again.

After the election defeat in 2010 the party wobbled – the faithful brought in Corbyn and the predictable result was disaster – Starmer has stepped in, dragged the party back to nearer where the electorate are and claimed his reward.

The Scottish National Party has, unfortunately for it, a much bigger problem. It believes in something which it badges as independence but in reality is removing Scotland from the UK and sticking it in Europe. This belief is not just one of many, it is their defining purpose. So dominant that it can never be discarded or even put on hold, it must always be just round the corner. So central that nothing else, including competent government, really matters.

This is what led John Swinney, leader of the SNP and, unfortunately, First Minister of Scotland, to tell the party faithful at their recent conference that, after receiving a giant kicking from the Scottish electorate in the recent UK election, the right thing for the party to do was to put independence right back at the heart of their thinking and message. The electorate has not listened so we must shout louder. This is stupid, politically and economically stupid.

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The political stupidity is that a large section of the electorate has moved on. Over a decade of incompetent government has taken its toll. Most Scots wanted the Conservatives removed from government in the UK but they look at the SNP and wonder after all that time in power what is better in Scotland and they cannot really think of anything. Not schools, not the health service, not social care, not suicide rates, not education, not roads, not rail travel, not ferries.

The electorate looks at the SNP and concludes that their overwhelming focus on independence just doesn’t do it for them. People have tired of the focus on the constitution and want the Scottish Government, which has more money to spend per head than the rest of the UK and levies higher taxes, to use their extensive powers to deliver on things which actually matter. No more silly marches, no more trying to blame Westminster for their own screw-ups, no more banging on about independence, just deliver.

(Image: Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn)

The economic stupidity is that the financial case to take Scotland out of the UK, which always looked shaky, is now catastrophic. Over the last ten years our growth rate has underperformed the UK as a whole. Despite more money to spend and charging higher taxes Scotland’s annual budget deficit is around three times that of the UK. Despite England being by far Scotland’s biggest export market the SNP policy of a separate Scotland joining the European Single Market would create trade barriers at our southern border which the rest of the UK would hardly notice but which would devastate Scotland’s economy.

Scotland leaving the UK would bring about a horrible day of reckoning. The cuts announced by the Scottish Finance Secretary this week would be nothing compared to what we would suffer. Tax rates might go up but the tax base would go down as people and companies left. The sums do not add up to anything but misery.

One day, after decades of demonstrating that Scotland is run better than the UK as a whole, the SNP might have a sensible prospectus to put to the people of Scotland.

For the foreseeable future though the SNP’s line that “everything would be fine if we could do as we pleased” is just a joke.