It is rather too easy to become fatalistic about Scotland’s direction of travel. If there is another country in the democratic world which is so impossibly stuck, then I don’t know it.

There are good things happening in Scotland, no doubt. Our renewables and life sciences industries spring to mind as beacons of hope and progress. But, I am disconsolate to say, the positive side of our balance sheet is outgunned by the negative.

The severe structural deficiencies in our education system are becoming visible in outcomes rather than simply being a theoretical concern. The foundation of the relationship between the delivery of the NHS and the expectations of its users is cracking, which everyone knows but is reluctant to admit. The tax base which we need to maintain and improve services like these is brittle, at best.

Ordinarily, all over the world, political gravity necessitates a political reaction when key outcomes like these begin to cause widespread unease. Either the party of government fixes the problem and is given another chance by the electors, or it is given its political P45, with its opponents offered the opportunity to do better.

Not so in Scotland, where our politics is based on a structure which prevents a change of government. Our predisposition towards voting on the basis of our views on Scotland’s constitutional future is a clear barrier to change.

And that’s not all. The barrier is made higher - much higher - by the fact that the centre-right yin to the centre-left SNP government’s yang comes in the form of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.

In the wake of last week’s vote of confidence in Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative party, and the lack of confidence in him by the leader of his party in Scotland, Douglas Ross, the latter has once again found himself under the microscope.

In a week when Mr Ross will have wanted the focus of the media to be on his proposed ‘Right to Recovery’ bill, aimed at reducing Scotland’s mind-boggling rate of drug deaths, the focus could scarcely have been further away.

Instead, the media was asking itself, and Mr Ross, and, on a variety of television and radio shows, me, how Mr Ross and Mr Johnson can both remain in their jobs whilst so publicly at loggerheads.

On that question, my view is that as long as Mr Ross is asking the public to vote for his colleagues in local government (as he did last month), or asking the public to vote for him (as he did last year in Holyrood elections), there should be no expectation that he should fall on Mr Johnson’s sword.

However, the next Scottish local government elections take place in 2027. And the next Scottish Parliament election takes place in 2026. Mr Ross and Mr Johnson are currently driving on the same road, towards the next Westminster general election, which cannot take place any later than December of 2024, but which may very well be upon us within the next 18 months.

At those polls, he will be asking the public to vote for Mr Johnson.

The general election is a steamroller in the distance, far enough away not to panic, but coming towards Mr Ross, with all the certainty of night following day.

Something has to give. Mr Ross and those around him are crossing their fingers and hoping that the give will come in the form of Mr Johnson’s defenestration. But how often have we heard that Mr Johnson’s time in office is at the beginning of its end? And, so far, how often has that come to fruition?

Fundamentally, leaving his own future at the mercy of a third party is not sensible. It is not leadership. However, that is the life of a Scottish Tory leader, is it not? I’ve been around enough of them to know. A Scottish Tory leader is not, first and foremost, an alternative First Minister. A Scottish Tory leader primarily a northern line of defence for the Tory leader at Westminster. The individual may not see himself or herself as such, but the media does, and the people do, and to a very large extent the party membership does, too.

Mr Ross, though, is not helpless or powerless. He may be running out of road as a general election approaches, but he can use that inevitability as a spur to fire the silver bullet which all Scottish Tory leaders have had in the barrel, but which none have been prepared to unleash.

That is to accept a Scottish political fact; that the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party cannot now or ever govern Scotland. Douglas Ross cannot be First Minister. This strays from assertion to fact because Scotland’s electoral system is custom-built for coalition or cooperation, and the other four parties of Holyrood have been firm and clear that they will not, now or ever, work with the Tories, far less prop up a Tory government.

And it is to act upon that Scottish political fact, by creating a new political party for the Scottish Parliament. A political party which has no relationship to the Tory party, formal or informal, and has no involvement in elections to Westminster. A political party which is unimpeachably Scottish. A political party which, in time, could play a role in unsticking Scottish politics, normalising us and, dare I say, Europeanising our political party structures.

A new political party is not a ready meal. It needs to be prepared and then cooked, and it needs a good amount of resting time before it is ready to be enjoyed. However since the alternative is not eating at all, the choice should be fairly clear.

Anyone in Scotland of a liberal, centre-right disposition (which, if we are anything like the rest of Europe, will be roughly half of us), whether that is elected politicians, advisers, party members or voters, must ask themselves a fundamental question now.

Do I want to win, or do I want to whine? Time to decide.

• Andy Maciver is Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters