What do you mean we can't bomb USA? It was in our manifesto

You can now leave in the past the dreadful day eight years ago when a referendum to put your perfectly reasonable question “Should we launch a nuclear attack on America now?” was decisively won by the No side who got 10% more votes than your Yes side.

This time it was different. The incredibly unreasonable Scottish Government and their poodle courts had refused you permission to hold another referendum but your voters were de facto behind you. No doubt about it.

There it was on page 43 of your Manifesto “we will launch a nuclear attack on the United States of America if re-elected”. Cast-iron, nailed on, you had a mandate to press the button.

Perhaps you should have paused to reflect that your manifesto contained a few other things too. Bins would be collected twice a week rather than now and then, council tax frozen for five years, free access to all council facilities, all potholes to be fixed within two years, several new schools, a 20 per cent pay rise for all council workers and free school meals for every child.

Could it have been that when deciding where to place their cross voters had considered these other promises as well as the one on page 43? We will never know.

The Let’s Trash Our Economy party had played the same game. The nuclear attack policy was there of course but so was free vegetables for everybody, free buses for all, your garden to be tended by young beautiful naked gardeners. Again, which of those policies had persuaded voters to vote for them was a mystery – but who cares – they had signed up for the big red button press.

You pick up the phone, phone Faslane and ask for the base commander. Rather charmingly they take the call. You explain you have a clear mandate to launch a nuclear attack and could they please give the order right now.

To your stunned outrage, after a brief period with a commendable lack of laughter, the phone is put down.

As the news spreads and after a bit of persuasion by you, huge marches of as many as 12 people spontaneously erupt in Port Glasgow. Addressing the faithful, your face twisted with venom, you explain the democratic outrage. Then exhausted you go to bed, the doctors will arrive later. The people of the United States slumber on unaware of their good fortune.

Can you spot what is wrong with this scenario?

The one you probably got to first is that the attack plan is barking. In that it has similarities with Scotland separating from the UK – no currency, huge cuts to public services, mortgage rates at 20 per cent (yup – that is what they pay in Turkey right now – another country with a daft economic policy).

The one you should have got is that a single policy wrapped inside a whole lot of other policies, some of which may be very attractive to voters – though not actually deliverable – does not give you any mandate at all to carry out that policy if it has within a reasonably recent period been specifically tried on voters in a referendum and clearly rejected.

Again, the parallels with the SNP are obvious. People may have voted SNP last year for many reasons – all of which were contained in a long and tedious manifesto. They do have a mandate to pursue all of the policies within that manifesto – except one – to have a referendum. Sturgeon goes on and on about the will of the people. The people have been directly consulted on Scotland leaving the UK and they said No – a democrat should respect that.

The one you may not have got but which is actually the key is that, despite what Nicola Sturgeon would like to be the case, the constitutional arrangement of the UK is not within the remit of the Scottish Government.

Just as Inverclyde Council should (and does) focus its efforts, within a far from generous financial settlement from the Scottish Government, on providing decent local services rather than nuclear Armageddon, the Scottish Government should focus on the issues which are its actual job – and where its record of delivery is appalling – schools, health, transport etc. The bread and butter issues which effect the daily lives of Scots are already within the powers of the Scottish Government to address.

The SNP Government should work in the best interests of Scotland and co-operate with the UK Government to address the many real issues which we face.

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Read more by Guy Stenhouse:

• Thank goodness the grown-ups are back in charge – Sturgeon take note
• Scottish regions which vote No to independence should be allowed to remain in UK
• If Scotland were on its own the international financial markets would smash us into submission without a second thought