Here is our guide to planning your Union Day celebrations!

For a start, this new bank holiday – backed this week by Alister “Union” Jack at the Tory party conference – wouldn’t actually amount to an extra day off work. Clearly only the work-shy would get excited about something like that. No, instead it could replace one of the “left-wing ones” we’re currently forced to endure.

Forget positivity. This won’t be an occasion for smiling, or laughing, or dancing round a maypole wearing a Jeremy Corbyn mask. Instead it will be a time of grim-faced reflection. Of celebrating the strength of the precious Union but doing so with stony dignity, without anyone making spectacles of themselves.

Think more along the lines of eating a pork pie while listening to God Save the Queen. Or watching the Red Arrows fly over Edinburgh Castle – newly liberated from the clutches of the rogues at Historic Scotland – and nodding sagely in British approval.

What might a right-wing bank holiday look like? Well, for starters it would need be scheduled for a cold month, to guard against the chances anyone might spend it frolicking in the sunshine, hosting a barbecue or doing something similarly unproductive. Fitting ways to celebrate could include constantly checking your work emails, making tax-avoidance arrangements, scolding homeless people or standing outside a jobcentre asking why it is closed and why unemployed people aren’t trying harder (Why do they need a holiday? Every day is already a holiday for them!).

Of course, celebrating the Union shouldn’t just be a one-off event – it should be a way of life. A way of twisting every news headline or poll result to suit the argument that everything going well is thanks to incredible work by Tory politicians, working quietly (even silently) behind the scenes, and anything going badly is the responsibility of the noisy, flashy SNP.

Scottish farmers finally getting the EU payments that were always earmarked for them, years too late? Hooray for the 13 Scottish Tory MPs, cutting through SNP arguments with exactly the same arguments delivered in posher accents! VAT cut for the Scottish police and fire services? Three cheers for the Scottish Tory MPs, successfully lobbying the UK Government to do exactly what the SNP, Labour and LibDems had been asking them to do for years!

The benefits of the Union are clear to see, if you work on the assumption that any problems with public services are due to someone who isn’t a Unionist failing to get on with their day job because they’re so obsessed with referendums.

It’s also important to forget any funny ideas you might have heard about how Scotland could do things differently in terms of things like drug policy, immigration and defence. These are reserved matters, and everyone knows the correct British way is to be reserved, as opposed to flapping about in the streets, waving medium-sized flags, blowing whistles and complaining about things like nuclear submarines on the Clyde. Everyone knows Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to have nuclear weapons of its own, but thanks to the pooling and sharing of the Union it is allowed to host an entire set. Talk about ingratitude!

If you’re in need of some pointers about how to show your support for the United Kingdom while looking like you’d rather be doing literally anything else, have a watch of Wednesday’s Strengthening the Union panel chaired by Tory MSP Michelle Ballantyne, at which the Scottish Secretary made his quip about Union Day.

While hearing how brilliantly Scotland is doing as part of the Austerity UK – sorry, while hearing how our healthcare, education and transport systems are in the toilet due to SNP mismanagement – most of the delegates caught on camera can be seen staring vacantly into space, or at the phones in their laps. One chap with his arms folded wonders what’s on the menu for lunch, while another texts a friend to say “I miss that jolly Scottish woman. This guy can’t even get a two-line gag right.”

Jack concluded his speech by stating that “Scotland – at the heart of the United Kingdom – has a very bright future”, but delivered the line with all the optimistic enthusiasm of a vet explaining that a beloved family dog will need to be euthanised. The cameras panned high as the Tories nudged each other awake, then it zoomed in on a single arm held aloft, waving a tiny Union flag.

The second rule of celebrating Union Day is that if you’re going to wave a flag, you need to go big or go home. Better yet, go to Nicola Sturgeon’s home and wave a massive Union flag in her garden. Between that and the giant flag that David Mundell has flying outside the back of her office, there will be no escape. Every day will be Union Day as well as Groundhog Day, with cries of “no to a second referendum!” from the Tory MSPs. Given that even their own members don’t appear to give a stuff about the Union, expect both the volume and the pitch to increase.