After a period of growing suspicion, I've been startled into realising that we, the Scots, are the most terrifying and dangerous threat to British democracy in these islands.

The polls say that we are overwhelmingly swinging towards a party who claim to not only reject spending £100 billion on renewing trident, but who also encourage diversity and are even developing policy to end austerity. And the establishment, stalwarts in protecting British democracy and values, are determined to fight to save the status quo.

Uncanny, isn't it? This rhetoric of protecting Britain has been deployed twice in less than a year for both pleading with the Scots to remain in the Union, and then to tell them that in fact, in the words of Tory MP and defence minister Anna Soubry, their SNP votes are 'very concerning for democracy and the safety of our nation'.

I'd like to know what democracy means for Soubry, if this is the case. I'd been led to believe all these years that it was about power vested in the people through their free choice to elect representatives, but perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps her version of 'democracy' is specifically a Scotland faced with successive Tory governments we never vote for. 'Cos that's first past the post - tradition, ye know?

And then there's what Soubry calls the 'audacious' possibility of Scots impacting Westminster policy. Audacious. Like a working class English teen thinking they have the right to a higher education. Or a woman pretending she's the leader of the third largest party in the UK. Don't be so silly, back in your box - this is a job furra boys.

I'm someone who has a knee-jerk reaction to power. In trying to maintain a healthy scepticism, I've become increasingly critical of the SNP since the referendum, trying to catch them out, preparing to declare "game's a bogey!" when they were revealed as complicit in the virus of corruption seemingly sweeping our representatives in Westminster.

But I also respect and value our democracy, and the untenable appetite for politics that many in Scotland have developed these past couple of years has led them to support and even join the SNP - their democratic choice.

The reality is that it's not difficult for the SNP to occupy the opposition when the alternatives in Scotland offer no radical or luminary vision, and every so-called political satire seems to attack Scottish culture rather than SNP politics - thanks for the cartoon using a little-known quote implying that we're inbreds, now where's your cartoon parodying their 180 on corporation tax?

Last week, Owen Jones blamed the right for the inevitable break up of Britain. But he forgot about the Labour party, who have allowed anger and resentment to fester in Scotland.

It is the traditional left who have abandoned Scotland, the Tories have always been Tories.

It is the distinct absence of anything resembling an alternative to austerity - a violence against our society's most vulnerable - and their determination to outflank the Tories on immigration and welfare issues. It is the perceived, elite stubbornness that will have them shoot themselves in the foot if they reject a Labour-SNP confidence and supply deal in May (all I hear is Gretchen Weiners screaming 'You can't sit with us!').

And finally, it is the left who do not argue against an increasingly hate-filled rhetoric about the democratic will of the people of Scotland, which was all fine and dandy back in September.

A few weeks ago, a few American friends who were touring in the UK crashed at mines after their Glasgow gig. Their driver, Rory from Essex, also stayed over, and we all went for pints.

After a referendum which flooded many in Scotland with the notion that perhaps the media wasn't quite as impartial and representative as we had allowed ourselves to believe prior, I was eager to quiz Rory about the upcoming general election, and his take on possible outcomes. After he duly lamented the unseemly rise of UKIP and applauded the impressive Green Surge in the English left, I had that familiar sense of ease when you discover a political friend.

And then, "But that Alex Salmond, he is bloody terrifying! Actually the whole SNP thing in Scotland is scary, right?"

It isn't scary to me to be represented by someone whose priorities are Scottish issues. That's democracy.

But I continue to ask myself the alarming question: if this isn't it, what is Scotland's place in this democracy?