SCOTLAND is a divided place, for sure. But, barring a small if sometimes loud and shouty minority, it is still, by and large, a reasonable place, full of reasonable people. We may disagree with each other profoundly about our nation’s future but, in the main, we still want argue it out in a tolerably civil manner.

For the most part, we want to hear the other side. Certainly, we want to put our own arguments in a way the other side will have to listen to and respond to. Our pantomime politics may sometimes have the appearance of a dialogue of the deaf but, underneath the surface, there is still a lot of listening going on.

Of course there are exceptions – and those serial examples who gathered in their noisy dozens to protest outside the Tory party leadership hustings in Perth last week are perfect representatives. But that is their point: they are representative only of that tiny, shouty minority that does not care how unreasonable they look in the eyes of others.

Our political leaders certainly do care how they appear to others. It may have been Alistair Darling’s motto at Better Together HQ that “we win this thing by being the reasonable ones” but it is a mantra shared as much by the SNP’s leadership as it is by the many and various leaders of the opposition.

One can be passionate, for sure, and one can react with dismay and despair at the policies of one’s opponents. But emotions need to be kept in check, for not everyone will share your zeal. Your goal, after all, is to win over the doubters, not to play only to the pre-committed gallery.

All of which is why we should pay far more attention to the political reaction to those protesters in Perth than we should to anything they were actually protesting about. The protesters expressed themselves so unreasonably that no reasonable person would waste much of their time seeking to engage with them. Their deserved fate is to be ignored, marginalised on the fringes of our politics.

The political reaction to the protests was revealing, however, even if our leaders have revealed something of themselves that was, perhaps, unwitting. Let’s start with the Tories. For days after the event the social media channels of Scotland’s leading Tories were replete with images and videos of the protests. Flags, banners, eggs, everywhere the “Tory scum out” poster given pride of place. Protesters’ faces red with rage and fury. Folk were revelling in it, showing anyone who pays attention to a Tory MSP’s Twitter feed just how nasty and unreasonable nationalists can be.

Two things strike me about this. First, much more was said by the Scottish Tories about what happened outside the hustings than inside. Social media was remarkably quiet, I felt, about the charms and insights that Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were putting in the shop window. A rare opportunity for showcasing the future of the Conservative party was shunned in favour of drawing attention to a few hardcore members of Scotland’s perennially angry brigade. That speaks volumes, does it not?

Second, much more energy was spent on seeking to highlight the behaviour of the protesters than any senior Tory has invested this summer in rebutting the arguments of the SNP – or even of the Labour party – about, say, the cost of living crisis. The grown-ups surely know that the only thing ordinary punters want to hear from their political leaders right now is what they are proposing to do to help us through the long, hard winter to come. But the Tories would rather busy themselves retweeting pictures of a few numpties hurling abuse.

If that is bad enough, the reaction of the SNP leadership was yet worse. For, while they complained about the abominable way the protesters treated journalists who were covering the event, they said nothing about the treatment handed out to ordinary party members who just wanted to hear what Truss and Sunak had to say for themselves. Further, the way SNP leaders expressed their displeasure was to point out that abusing journalists does “the cause” no good. What matters, for them, is not the thuggish behaviour, but the health and safety of the cause.

Chris Deerin, writing in the New Statesman, described this reaction, singling out Nicola Sturgeon’s words in particular, as “contemptible”. That’s a strong term – but he’s not wrong.

This is not the first time Ms Sturgeon’s mask of reasonableness has slipped, but it’s happening now with sufficient frequency for people to start to notice. Before 2014, Deerin wrote some scathing columns about Nicola Sturgeon’s predecessor, but Ms Sturgeon’s resolute opposition to Brexit, her commitment to social democracy, and her love of reading have, over the years, impressed him.

You could sense his mind becoming increasingly indy-curious. He is precisely the sort of sensible, thoughtful voter that the Nationalists need to win over if they are ever going to turn 2014’s No vote into something they can celebrate. To see a writer such as Deerin talk of the First Minister’s reaction as being “contemptible”, then, should set every red light flashing in SNP HQ.

The Sturgeon-Swinney generation will, sooner or later, pass the nationalist baton on to a younger generation. Perhaps it is the growing realisation that a lifetime of political struggle really does not look like it’s going to yield the result of their dreams that is causing them to loosen their formerly vice-like grip on appearing at all times reasonable to all people. Or perhaps they are just exhausted, and ever more prone to unforced errors.

A generation ago, New Labour knew it had to purge the extremists from the party before it could win. If Swinney and Sturgeon won’t do it, the next generation of nationalist leaders will likewise have to purge the extremists from their movement. Reasonable Scotland will never embrace their constitutional dream otherwise.

Adam Tomkins was a Conservative MSP for the Glasgow region from 2016 to 2021.