AND lo, did it come to pass that 91 days into his premiership Boris Johnson made a bald statement of fact, free from artifice, spin, bluster or mendacity. 

Declaring that coronavirus would become the worst public health crisis in a generation, the Prime Minister said on Thursday: “It is going to spread further and I must level with the British public: many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” 

This contagion has moved so quickly through the world that not even Dominic Cummings has had time to ‘game’ it.

Coronavirus is so potent that it is beyond the reach of the Pennywise lurking in the basement of Number 10 and his insidious algorithms.

As the world’s best scientists and biologists face a race against time to produce a vaccine for this lethal pathogen Mr Cummings is facing his own ticking clock: to find a way of manipulating coronavirus for his master’s political benefit before his advice is rendered obsolete by the gathering fury of this pandemic.

Earlier the same day, Nicola Sturgeon had hosted a press briefing of her own about what had been discussed at the emergency Cobra meeting on coronavirus. The First Minister thus announced that in Scotland gatherings of more than 500 people would be cancelled.

This, she explained, was principally about keeping police and front-line MHS staff safe, rather than as a means of slowing the spread of the virus.

Within moments a tumult of squawks and yelps began issuing from a familiar menagerie of middle England’s elite poltroons. How dare Ms Sturgeon upstage the Prime Minister?

READ MORE: First coronavirus death in Scotland confirmed

As my esteemed Herald colleague Kirsty Strickland tweeted memorably: “She’s the leader of an entire f**king country. It’s not her job to keep quiet to protect Boris Johnson’s ego. Tenner bet that all the men popping up to tell me to watch my language do not wash their hands regularly.” Well, quite…

Ms Sturgeon’s latest update from the front-line was delivered with her customary clarity and plainness of speech. These had characterised her regular updates as Scotland’s Health Minister during the 2009 Swine Flu crisis and marked her out as a future leader. Perhaps her counterpart in Downing Street has been paying attention. This might explain his new-found oral precision. 

Those of us whose job it is to maintain a weather eye on the warp and weft of emerging global events instinctively seek to discover in them portents of future political consequences. It leaves us open to charges of callousness: of caring more about shallow tribal politics than about their raw impact on real human beings. Yet, while this is a not unreasonable verdict, governments and political movements stand or fall on the quality of their leadership during troubled times. 

Barely three months into his new job Boris Johnson knows that his administration will be judged on how it is perceived to have acted during this crisis. This won’t rest on the number of lives claimed by coronavirus (that is surely beyond his control) but on whether or not he is deemed to have been on top of the crisis as it moves across Britain. This perhaps explains the untypically brisk and business-like manner in which he conveyed his message on Thursday.

Neither is it unreasonable to attempt to quantify its potential impact on the campaign for Scottish independence. Some commentators have suggested – again not unreasonably – that the global sweep of coronavirus has rendered matters pertaining to narrow national concerns inconsequential.

The struggle first to contain this virus and then to defeat it will be fought on higher plains well beyond the jurisdiction of Holyrood. Of what trifling import is the struggle for self-determination when an international pandemic threatens the world’s health? 

However, this is merely one view. Being a glass-half-full kind of chiel I hold a different one: this public health crisis as an opportunity for the SNP and the wider Yes movement to show their mettle and perhaps to undertake an overdue spring-clean of its own house. 

Unionists are ever eager to identify what they regard as the negative facets of Scottish nationalism; that it is perennially divisive in nature and travels on perma-rage and grievance. Yet, an edifying feature of these last few turbid weeks has been the sense of mutual cooperation between Holyrood and Westminster just a few months after the malevolent sturm und drang of Brexit and the 2019 general election. 

If both governments continue in this vein during the coronavirus threat it surely augurs well for relations between the two jurisdictions in the event that Scotland gains her independence. Perhaps we are being favoured with a glimpse of how an independent Scotland will continue to work closely and in a mature spirit of collaboration with its respected and long-standing neighbour. 

Seen in this light the way that both countries respond together to this formidable challenge could be a defining period for full Scottish autonomy. The manner in which the Scottish Government is seen to have acted during this time will also be assessed by those who would determine Scotland’s fitness for future membership of the EU.

READ MORE: Tom Gordon: Scottish independence: Coronavirus is a blow to Indyref2 and changes the Scottish political landscape

In some ways too this public health crisis provides an opportunity for the SNP’s warring factions to get a grip and re-engage with normal people and their normal concerns. The emergence of a tiny trans-rights faction within the SNP wielding grotesquely disproportionate influence on its social policies is, I think, an inevitable consequence of being in power for an inordinately long period of time. Untroubled by anything resembling a competent opposition some in the party have become indolent and self-serving. 

They have become disconnected from the real concerns of real people, dancing on the head of a pin with self-indulgent social experiments in human sexuality. 

A chasm presently exists between the SNP’s ideological, grand wizards and its own rank and file membership whom they have come to disdain. I sense that many are being pushed to the outer limits of their loyalty to the cause over the party’s proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. 

Any hopes they may have entertained of holding a second independence referendum in 2020 have surely now been scuppered by coronavirus. Perhaps this is just as well. It could use this time to get to know us all once more: to stop preaching and start listening again.