Prattling away in his padded cell in Downing Street, Boris Johnson is the SNP’s greatest asset

Increasingly, to watch Boris Johnson face questions in the House of Commons is to see an ageing Bilbo Baggins catching a glimpse of the ring at Rivendell. 

He wasn’t in the House of Commons today but taking questions “virtually” from in front of a big white backdrop, speaking into a microphone that sounded as if it may, in fact, have been a yoghurt pot on a length of string.

Last week, the prime minister came within two metres of an MP called Lee Anderson, who wants his own constituents to be forced to pick vegetables, take cold showers and live in tents (another story), and so he has to self-isolate. Quite a journey, really, from going on live television and bragging about shaking hands with coronavirus patients. But at least he’s made it, even if tens of thousands of others haven’t.

Mere days after the thermonuclear meltdown among his own staff, which he tried his best to sort out by agreeing with whoever he last spoke to (which ultimately didn’t work), Johnson has found a new disaster, entirely of his own making.

Scotland, this time, and the ongoing fallout from his needless act of self-sabotage on Monday night, when he breezily announced to half his own MPs that devolution “had been a disaster”. Since he said those words, other people have come out and tried to atone for him, explaining what he should have said, or meant to have said, but didn’t actually say. All of it would prove to be futile.

It was not surprising that the SNP’s Ian Blackford used Prime Minister’s Questions to capitalise on the prime minister’s dim words. The SNP knows that Johnson is the greatest gift it will ever be given. It knows, much to the party’s delight, that it isn’t merely Scottish nationalists that loathe Johnson. Scotland is bitterly divided on the subject of independence. A visceral hatred of Johnson is what brings them together.

The Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross knows this, which is why he has to apologise for Johnson every time he opens his mouth. And Ruth Davidson knows it, too, which is why she quit.

So here was Johnson, doing his bit to sort out the most recent mess of his own making, by launching quarter-arsedly into columnist mode, telling the people of Scotland what they think, what they want, why he’s right and why they’re wrong, to utterly inevitable consequences. Beneath the prime ministerial veneer, the columnist always lurks, ready to snarl out a hopelessly self-indulgent paragraph instead of an actual answer.

At the time of writing, all opinion polls on the subject show clear and heavy majorities in favour of Scottish independence, and in the wider United Kingdom, for the belief that Brexit has been and will continue to be a mistake.  

Just as, a few weeks ago, the prime minister made an international embarrassment of himself by claiming, at the despatch box of the House of Commons, that the UK has been more badly ravaged than other European countries by Covid because this country loves freedom more than they do, so here again was another fact-free, reason-free, sense-free, truth-free little peroration.

Here he was, telling the SNP that all it wants to do is “give power back to Brussels”, specifically, the power over which the UK has just “taken back control”, despite the clear evidence Scotland doesn’t want it, never did want it, and nor, anymore, does the rest of the country.

“Power over Scottish fisheries, power over many aspects of their lives,” the prime minister wittered. “All that will be lost, under his programme, and I do not believe it will commend itself to the Scottish people.”

Mr Blackford laughed, though it was hard to deduce quite what at, as all manner of options had been proffered simultaneously. The answer had been both comic in its ineptitude, but also something of a delight, from a strategic perspective:

All these things you don’t want, that you’re having foisted on you entirely against your will, that will cost you vast fortunes… if you’re not careful, you’ll lose them.

So shambolic was it by the end that the speaker cut Johnson off and moved on to the next question, in the style of Fox News deciding Donald Trump’s rants were so absurd that they could no longer broadcast them in good faith.

Quite what Scotland might decide to do is not certain, and nor is the pathway by which it might do any of it. Polls are polls, they go up as well as down. What is known is that it’s said no to independence once, and said no to Brexit. Should it be asked the first question again, the people who will decide the outcome will be the more ponderous, more circumspect, less fanatical ones, the ones prepared to change their minds since last time.

There’ll be, as someone once said, no cakes on the table, only salt and vinegar. Go it alone or stick with England?

It’s hardly surprising Blackford and co can’t stop laughing. They have their greatest asset, prattling away into his laptop in his padded cell in Downing Street.