I’ve spent much of this week in the Scottish Parliament; June is a busy month for someone in my line of work. It’s a dispiriting place at the moment. Fractious. Full of grumpy MSPs briefing against each other and offering the impression that they would hack off a finger with a rusty butter knife if it meant they could win an extra day of recess.

The rotten atmosphere has its roots all the way back to the independence referendum of 2014, but hugely intensified towards the end of the last session of Parliament and has continued into this one. There is no end in sight.

Our 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament define themselves by whether they are nationalist or unionist rather than whether they are left, right or centre. It’s more Northern Ireland than Norway, and it is a recipe for policy drift and inertia.

Ideology is often considered a dirty word in politics, but it should not be. Political ideology is absolutely critical. It is the foundation for the most basic debates about how to run a country. It informs how governments and opposition parties run public services, invest in infrastructure and set tax rates.

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However, here in Scotland we reject ideological debate in favour of constitutional debate and therefore create something of a conspiracy of silence on these matters of great importance.

This is, when one considers it deeply enough, the fault of the monstrous system we have created rather than the leaders who operate within it. The Holyrood Sources podcast, of which I am a part, has had a number of high-profile guests over the last few months since its debut.

And it has struck me that those politicians who have proffered the most interesting and thoughtful comments are the ones who no longer have skin in the game. They are the ‘weres’ rather than the ‘ares’. Because, of course, when they held the keys to the castle, they were unable to make decisions which might risk leaking votes to the other side, whereas now they are off the leash.

They used to have the power to lead but not to speak; now they have the power to speak but not to lead.

It should go without saying that this is not a good thing, but if you need any proof then sit for a moment and try to name an area of policy over which the government has responsibility which has moved in a positive direction since the independence referendum of 2014. And then try to remember any point in the last eight years when you have heard your leaders debate it.

Last weekend in Dundee, First Minister Humza Yousaf kept the independence flame burning with the SNP faithful by finding a new form of words to say the same thing: independence is right around the corner and if you vote for us at the next election we’ll get there.

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Hold a mirror up to this position and you will see that of the Scottish Tory party. The SNP is pushing for another referendum and if you don’t vote for us they’re going to get one.

Both positions, very clearly, fail the sniff test, but nonetheless politics is politics, perception is everything, and we are caught in a constitutional death loop. As a country with more than its fair share of problems, we cannot afford to wait much longer to move away from constitutionalism and back to ideology.

Mr Yousaf’s Minister for Independence, Jamie Hepburn, has subsequently challenged the Conservative government in Westminster to prove that the Union is voluntary, by offering a roadmap to independence. The Conservatives will not do that, but the case for the Labour government-in-waiting to do so has become democratically, politically and strategically compelling.

The Labour party’s voter base is complex, and getting more so. It has committed unionists, the constitutionally flexible and, increasingly, nationalists too. This demands a degree of thoughtfulness which need not trouble their Conservative opponents, but the outcome of that thought is highly likely to be of electoral benefit to the party.

Labour should say, now, that if parties explicitly supporting a referendum in their manifestos for the general election were to win more than 50 per cent of the votes, then a second referendum will be held in the second half of the Westminster parliamentary term, after the next Scottish Parliament election of 2026.

This would, in effect, be a compromise position between those who believe there is a mandate from the 2021 Holyrood elections for a referendum to be held now, and those who deny the right for one to be held at all, ever again.

If the nationalist parties fail to win 50 per cent of the vote in that election, then a second referendum should be explicitly off the table until polling shows that there is consistent, sustained support of 60 per cent or more for independence. This is a figure which, in any case, nationalist strategists informally regard as a ‘settled will’ proportion of the country.

Should the nationalist parties win 50 per cent of the seats, then the Scottish and UK Governments should immediately begin negotiations on the basic terms of the separation agreement between the nations, so that when the referendum arrives, the people can be certain of precisely what they are voting for.

Based on current polling trends, one would expect that the nationalist parties would fail to meet the threshold, and that the matter would be made dormant for a long period of time, perhaps ever. Were Labour to offer an alternative vision of a renovated Britain, including home rule for Scotland, it is almost inevitable that the 50 per cent threshold would fail to be met.

However, even if it was met, and we then went into a referendum cycle, there would at least be light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel. There would at least be a path to a country in which we once again position ourselves around ideology rather than constitutionality; a country in which we once again debate the things that really matter.

God knows we need it. Because, as MSPs depart Parliament this week, they leave behind a country on the slide.

• Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters