SO you’re invincible, are you, Mr Johnson? The Prime Minister seems to believe he really is. Speaking to reporters from his plane to India on Wednesday night, he sounded defiant: partygate shmartygate, no one cares; can’t think of a single reason to resign; fully intend to fight the next general election: that was the gist.

This is the most lurid illustration to date of Boris Johnson’s astonishing sense of entitlement. He is famously a person who never denies himself anything, never apologises and never takes the rap for the damage he causes, whether personally or politically. He has learned in his lifetime of privilege that he doesn’t have to – that he can brazenly disregard the rules and sail on regardless – and until now, his party has shamefully reinforced in him those beliefs by letting him hang on in spite of their personal fury at his law-breaking and lying.

It's having a resounding impact. Hairline cracks are appearing in the foundations of democratic politics.

And it’s giving some Scottish voters another reason to consider independence.

It’s arresting just how much more potent emotions are than reasoned argument in moving the political dial. That has often been the case with independence. We saw it in 2014 during an emotive Yes campaign and again in 2016, when many Scots despaired of the UK due to the Brexit vote.

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I’ve seen it often with individuals – people who thought themselves committed pro-UK supporters suddenly seeing the attractions of independence, however fleetingly, in the face of some action by the UK government. They know Boris Johnson won’t be there forever; they know independence would create certain problems; they know that the SNP has form for making unrealistic promises about it; but sometimes, things happen that just make them want out of the UK.

There have been two such repellent episodes in the last fortnight: Priti Patel’s scheme to send people seeking asylum in the UK to Rwanda for “processing” – far from scrutiny in a country with a poor human rights record, accused by Amnesty International of torturing detainees; and now the Prime Minister metaphorically mooning at us after being fined for attending a lockdown party.

“It makes you want to take Scotland and go,” one friend told me.

No has been ahead of Yes in recent polls (there hasn’t been one in a couple of weeks) but they are very close and we know that Scottish voters’ contempt for Boris Johnson has influenced those numbers before.

Mr Johnson may believe he can weather any storm, now he’s recast himself as a war leader (one who isn’t at war), but the ignominious legacy of his premiership may still be that he sets the scene for the break up of the UK.

Certainly Ms Sturgeon will have gone home smiling on Wednesday having heard that her most precious asset has signalled his intention to try and win a second term.

An independence referendum next year is highly unlikely, though, so the big question is how much of an impact Boris Johnson’s litany of wrongdoing will have on voters’ feelings about independence by the time of any vote. Cries from unionists of “I’m voting for indy!” in the heat of the moment after Brexit or the outbreak of Covid, subsequently receded and may do again over Partygate.

But this sort of political turmoil leaves a shadow. Pro-UK supporters who had been through the experience of breaking a personal taboo by imagining themselves backing Yes, even just for a moment, might be more open to the Yes case during a referendum campaign.

That’s for the future. Right now, we are left trying to assess the damage that Boris Johnson is doing to politics more broadly – and it’s very worrying.

Over the past three years, a base political culture has established itself here in the UK, through Johnson and his supporters, that seeks to justify and explain away dishonesty, sleaze and a lack of personal responsibility. It embodies contempt for parliament, and seeks to pin the blame for the Prime Minister’s failings on others.

The illegal proroguing of parliament; the verbal attacks on judges that followed; the lies about the impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland; the threat to break international law over the EU Withdrawal Agreement; the attempt to rig the parliamentary standards process to help Tory MPs get away with sleaze; and of course the Downing Street lockdown parties and the repeated lies the Prime Minister has told about them: these are just some of the ways in which this Prime Minister and his coterie have shown disregard for the lynchpin of British democracy – parliament, the courts, the rule of law.

He helped win the Brexit referendum and won the premiership by consciously fuelling painful divisions in society, often by misrepresenting the truth.

He has with his lockdown parties and dishonesty abased the standards that British leaders have consensually upheld for decades, and to a degree that would have seemed inconceivable even five years ago. By breaking his own Covid laws, he has not only insulted voters, he has further diminished trust in politicians and the political system – something that was already at a low ebb. Without that trust and respect, democratic politics cannot function effectively.

Boris Johnson appears to believe that voters are too stupid to perceive the danger and too small-minded or harassed to care. He also seems to believe we have Pavlovian reactions and can therefore be trained to respond as he wishes: throw the base some red meat like a scheme to send asylum seekers to Africa and they’ll happily gnaw on that, forgetting about his lawbreaking. “Distract and move on” – that’s the Johnson way.

It’s striking, the low opinion that he appears to have of us.

But we are neither too stupid nor too small-minded. Unlike serial Johnson apologist Brandon Lewis, we can see the difference between a parking fine and a Prime Minister breaking Covid rules at the height of lockdown (then lying about it). An Ipsos survey last week found that more than half of voters want him to resign after being fined for Covid rule-breaking and only a quarter think he should stay. That means that voters are angry about his trashing of democratic principles – angrier than he may realise – and want to see him take responsibility. The public is a rather better guardian of British democratic principles than the Prime Minister, it seems.

It's pretty clear by now that the Prime Minister won’t go before the next general election unless he is forced out. Voters will have the chance to make their views known in the May local elections, though the low turnout that often marks council votes and the influence of local issues might give him the appearance of greater support than he actually has.

He needs to stop taking the public for fools. After a thousand days of a Boris Johnson premiership, if we voters have learned one thing it’s this: we deserve so much better and so our democratic system.

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