There will be a day John Swinney has a Labour leader grovelling to him

I look forward to the day when Keir Starmer has to come grovelling to John Swinney. Let me correct myself. There was an inaccuracy in that sentence.

I should have said: I look forward to the day when whoever replaces Keir Starmer has to come grovelling to John Swinney.

Starmer will be lucky to survive beyond next May. His fate will be sealed by the Scottish general election, the Welsh general election and London’s local elections.

Labour will be flattened. If we’re lucky, Britain will bid goodbye to a Prime Minister so awful he gives Liz Truss a run for her money as the UK’s worst leader.

Truss was a demented idiot, but at least she had convictions (even if those convictions should have got her locked up). Starmer is a moral vacuum, a man with no beliefs, no principles, no character, no backbone.

He cares only about the cynical and empty exercise of power. He’s contemptible, and the Labour Party he’s forged in his image is as contemptible as its master.

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So Starmer will probably be gone come the time of the 2029 UK general election. Should Labour keep him on as leader after next May’s inevitably hammering, then the party should be reclassified as a death cult. The defenestration of Mr Charisma will be the only possible route to avoiding complete annihilation in 2029.

It will therefore become the task of whichever pitiful fool is left to pick up the pieces, after Labour has ditched Starmer, to come on bended knee to the SNP.

Should no party be able to form a government after the 2029 election, Labour will inevitably have to lick Scottish boots - and Welsh, Irish, and Green boots.

It’s unlikely Reform will win a majority. Yes, they’re riding high in the polls today, but so was the SDP-Liberal Alliance in 1981 when it hit 50%. Margaret Thatcher waltzed to victory in 1983. Starmer is no Thatcher.

Reform is benefitting from voter anger. Support will fall as scrutiny of Farage and his party increases.

The likely outcome of the next general election will be the kind of horse-trading last seen in the Wild West. Reform and the rump Tories will try to establish a government, probably depending on the risible DUP and assorted Ulster unionists.

In turn, Labour will go cap in hand to the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens and Northern Ireland’s SDLP. The LibDems won’t be enough to save Labour alone.

It’s at this point that Swinney should point at his shoes and ask for them to be cleaned, preferably with the tongue of whichever sap is leading the shellshocked remains of Labour.

I suspect Swinney is too nice, though. But he should remind the Labour sap in question of Starmer’s comments this week, just to twist the knife a little.

According to Starmer, Swinney is “insulting” Scotland with his plans for independence. This is like saying birds insult the air because they fly. Swinney’s political raison d’être is independence. He was elected on an independence manifesto.

Independence to the SNP is what socialism should be to Labour: written across its heart. The SNP has kept true to its principles. Labour, however, has treated socialism the way an anaesthetist treats their patient.

The only person insulting Scotland is Starmer. He claims there will be no independence referendum while he is PM.

“We’re not having an independence referendum,” he proclaims. “It won’t happen.”

Who does this flailing buffoon think he is? He’s Prime Minister, not dictator. If it’s the will of the Scottish people, then there will be a referendum whether he, his party, or Westminster likes it or not. To wish otherwise, is to hate democracy.

Starmer levels a triple insult at Scotland, though. Not only does he dismiss the possibility of a referendum now - despite a majority of Yes supporting MSPs in Holyrood - but he dismisses the possibility of a referendum in the next Scottish Parliament should there be a straight SNP majority.

In addition, he - like the Tories before him - will not state clearly how Scotland can ever break this stranglehold. He will not name the conditions under which Westminster would permit another referendum.

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So Scotland remains trapped - like some bride in Bluebeard’s castle - unable to escape. A country cannot be treated in this way. This is not democracy. It is authoritarian bullying, it’s controlling, it’s gaslighting.

The Scottish Government should not have to seek permission from another government on the exercise of democracy in this country. Like Northern Ireland, there should be an agreed formula for what triggers a referendum in Scotland, and in Wales.

Swinney has set out his stall on independence. He will consider a majority of SNP seats at Holyrood a mandate to seek another independence referendum.

Come next May, if the SNP achieves that, then Swinney needs to get nasty with whoever is then running Labour and the UK government.

Should there be a mandate but yet another No from London, then the SNP should pull their MPs from the House of Commons.

Swinney should go to London and refuse to leave the doorstep of Number 10 until an agreement has been reached over how another referendum is held.

I speak to constitutional experts nearly every week as part of my job. Most of them aren’t Scottish. Most of them do not want to see Scotland leave the union. I respect them for that. Unionism is a political position which should be treated honourably and met with friendship.

But none of these unionist experts on the constitution support the present situation of keeping Scotland in the dark and refusing to say how another referendum can be achieved. They see it as unfair at best, and anti-democratic at worst.

Starmer’s form of unionism doesn’t deserve respect, however. It smacks of the old colonial mindset. He’s saying - like a Viceroy - ‘England decides and Scotland will do as it is told’. That cannot stand.

So, it’s a real shame that there will be some other sap from Labour who will end up kissing John Swinney’s shoes one day.

How much more pleasing it would be to see Starmer on his knees, swallowing down all the humiliation he so richly deserves.