SO he picked up the phone.

Ach well, it’s a start. After Liz Truss went through her nano-premiership without even blowing Nicola Sturgeon a kiss from afar, Rishi Sunak called her on day one. A break with the past, so we’re being encouraged to believe.

Ah hae ma doots. For all the talk of “constructive” dialogue (Sturgeon) and working together “closely” (Sunak), a warm, positive relationship between the UK and Scottish governments is not going to materialise.

The fundamental problem is that the SNP doesn’t want it, with apologies for how cynical that sounds. The Scottish Government’s tried-and-tested political formula is to demonstrate in any way possible that, one, devolution can’t work; and two, it’s under existential threat from the nasty Tories anyway.

Meanwhile, the UK government is deeply suspicious of Holyrood ministers, implacably opposed to a second independence referendum and has no interest in acknowledging the achievements or mandate of the SNP. At a hustings in Perth in July, Mr Sunak said, “we live in a Union which is of course there by consent and by democracy and I accept that” but went on in the next breath to oppose another referendum. Holyrood be damned.

So the trenches haven’t moved. You could see that clearly from Sturgeon’s comments after her chat with the Prime Minister. She called for respect for “mandates” (translation: give me my referendum) and said she had raised fears about further austerity (translation: I’m blaming you for the deteriorating state of Scottish services). Sunak meanwhile “emphasised our duty” to work closely together for “the people of the United Kingdom” (translation: stop the blame game and, by the way, you’re not getting a referendum). Plus ça change.

But the relationship still matters. Even SNP ministers would have to acknowledge that the bad blood between Holyrood and Westminster has been too much in recent years. The public interest gets lost in this endless tussle and both sides are to blame.

A relationship between the two leaders and their teams that is at least civil and respectful, is necessary for the proper functioning of government.

Unfortunately, Johnson and Truss didn’t seem interested. They were understandably sick of the SNP blaming Westminster for all Scotland’s ills, but they came up with the wrong solutions. Truss believed she could “ignore” Nicola Sturgeon and Johnson thought what the situation needed was bellicose “muscular unionism” which was openly provoking of the Scottish Government and sought to be much more directly interventionist in Scotland, bypassing Holyrood.

They ended up as Scotland’s two least popular Prime Ministers.

So what will Sunak do? In spite of the conciliatory tone, he has signalled that he intends to take a similar approach as Boris Johnson, one driven by suspicion and mistrust – and that’s a big mistake.

He wants to hold the SNP to account for their performance in devolved areas, ending the “devolve and forget” mentality in Westminster (he seems unwilling to leave it to the Scottish Tories, whose job it should be). He’s come up with a plan to force the Scottish permanent secretary to submit to questioning by Westminster committees about devolved matters.

As chancellor, he spent cash directly in Scottish council areas, cutting out Holyrood, and we can assume he wants to do more of the same. He also wants to impose the same formulas for reporting public service data across the UK so that he can “hold the Scottish Government accountable for public service delivery”.

All this might seem like a no-brainer to a special adviser sitting in a fifth-floor office in Whitehall, but ideas like this do not to travel well. The Tories need to think about the optics in Scotland of ministers from an unloved, hard-right, Brexit-loving UK government that has just wrecked the economy, taking it upon themselves to tell Scottish voters who did not vote for them, that the Edinburgh government they did vote for is useless and from now on, needs to have its homework marked by Westminster.

Because that’s what it sounds like.

UK ministers need to learn that this sort of approach to the Scottish Government is not just disrespectful to the SNP, as they imagine, but disrespectful to Scottish voters.

I don’t mean just independence supporters either, but the very many Scottish voters who are fundamentally Union-supporting but infinitely prefer the more compassionate, centre-left domestic government they have in Scotland to the chaotic, incompetent right-wing one they’ve had to put up with in Westminster.

UK ministers processing north regularly to make condescending comments about the functioning of public services in Scotland while strikes, backlogs, waiting lists and labour shortages ravage services in England, would be a bad joke.

If anyone’s going to make interventions into the workings of the other government, it should arguably be the other way round. Nicola Sturgeon could give a lesson or two on stable government (perhaps Mr Sunak could invite her to do a PowerPoint presentation to the UK cabinet, in the supposed new spirit of entente).

What you can discern in the Conservatives’ wrong-headed thinking on Scotland is two fundamental problems: a habit of looking at Scotland through the prism of hatred for the SNP; and seeing the rise of the SNP as the “fault” of devolution. Some Tories, especially outside of Scotland, seem to imagine that if only Labour hadn’t created a Scottish Parliament, then Scotland would be at peace with centralised Westminster power, and give them far less trouble.

It’s nonsense, of course, and ignores the overwhelming support there had been for a Scottish parliament going back decades – if Tony Blair had denied Scotland its parliament, all hell would have broken loose – but many Tories are hopelessly lost to this way of thinking. Their instinct is that Scotland needs to be brought to heel.

Will they never learn?

Let’s see what happens. The appointment of Michael Gove as minister for intergovernmental relations – a figure with a more nuanced understanding of Scottish politics than most of his colleagues – perhaps means that the tub-thumping rhetoric of the summer will be tempered. It’s early days.

But given what we know so far, Rishi Sunak looks set to make the same mistakes on Scotland all over again.

Read more by Rebecca McQuillan:

Sturgeon is making the case for immigration. Good for her

A bonfire of food safety standards? Is this what Brexit is really about?