IT’S as if everyone is holding their collective breath. Brexit fatigue and a generalised “slough of despond” hang over the UK. The universally discredited Universal Credit rolls on, despite increasingly urgent warnings from affected individuals, advice organisations and elected members of almost every stripe.

Extraordinarily low levels of unemployment (lower still in Scotland, to the suppressed fury of Scottish Tory MSPs), co-exist alongside precarious employment and continuing wage constraint.

Against this background we have a Tory Government utterly absorbed with fighting each other, and fending off imaginary foreign foes. As far as they are concerned, good government can go hang, while they are at battle stations.

It was never an inspiring vision, but you almost get nostalgic for the way Tories of old used to cleave to Alexander Pope’s dictum: “For forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.” If only this Government was administering.

It has left whole swathes of public policy derelict while it consumes itself over Brexit. The Conservative-run Northamptonshire County Council has become the first council to issue a section 114 notice in 20 years, which prohibits all spending other than on statutory services. It would be interesting to hear whether its Tory councillors agree that “austerity is over”?

Every week seems to see the UK drop down international indices on growth and productivity. Every day we hear about stalled investments, loss of job opportunities, and diminishing international horizons for young people.

All this against a Brexit backdrop that seems to have the Tories reaching for the swear-box as they describe ... each other! Scots Tory factions describe their counterparts as “arseholes”. Tory students wear t-shirts emblazoned “f*** the NHS”, and now, a Tory MP, Johnny Mercer, describes the performance of the Tory Government as a “shit show”!

I cannot recall a government in such disarray. If its reputation domestically has been trashed, then it seems its international standing, and inevitably that of the UK on the international stage, has been hugely damaged.

The utterly deplorable contempt being shown to the Irish Government seems likely to have major current and future consequences. The pantomimes and platitudes offered to the EU, often before the starters and a quick exit, have drained the UKs credibility, and its future relations with our current partners.

There are better options available, even at this late stage. On Monday the First Minister laid out, in a considered and impressive speech in London, a possible route map out of May’s morass. Staying in the single market and the customs union would undoubtedly be difficult for the Tory Brexiteers, but may be the only option able to get through the Commons.

It seems unlikely such sound advice will be heeded. Theresa May is assailed on all sides (though I imagine David Mundell’s threatened resignation(s) will not be foremost among the PM’s anxieties). As she desperately seeks an exit from Brexit, the question is now of how long the chaos should continue, and what will bring it crashing down.

Whether it is in terms of its domestic agenda, or its efforts to extricate itself from the EU, it’s clear that Scotland is being badly treated by a government most people in Scotland rejected, and which is wholly absorbed in its pursuit of a Brexit that nearly two thirds of people in Scotland opposed.

This anti-democratic death grip cannot be Scotland’s future. Many of those who voted No to independence have changed their minds. Many, many more are willing to consider anew the possibilities, as they view with dismay the appalling post-referendum treatment of Scotland.

That many of us who have long supported independence feel even more strongly about it now is no bad thing, of course. But what is crucial is that more and more people can be encouraged to feel that way, and to see a brighter future for an internationally engaged and independent Scotland than can ever be achieved by the isolationist, angry and incompetent Tory government.