A couple of fun-packed weeks ago, when Theresa May launched her leadership bid, she wore her Vivienne Westwood Black Watch tartan suit. It was best not to wear it when visiting Scotland in her first diplomatic trip as Westminster’s prime minister. As a stylish British outfit, the suit cannot be faulted. As a sartorial message to the Scots of the union, which May says is “precious” to her, it’s more ambiguous.

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The Black Watch, Scotland’s senior regiment of Highlanders, fought for Britain in two world wars, but was stripped by Westminster of its individual identity in 2006. The first play mounted by the new National Theatre of Scotland, itself a symbol of heightened Scottish identity after devolution, was Black Watch, by Gregory Burke. The critical and popular hit marked the bitter passing of the regiment, largely drawing on interviews with men who had seen service in Iraq. Awkward.

Westwood is an enthusiastic supporter of Scottish independence herself. The fashion designer says she is “very unpatriotic about England” and expresses disappointment that Scotland rejected independence in 2014. All the suit says to the people of Scotland is: “Look. I’m patronising you. Heather. Whisky. Tartan. That’s you, that is.” These are sentimental badges of patriotism that Scots are more than able to exploit for ourselves, thanks very much.

Shallow cultural appropriation is all the more annoying when your domineering neighbour has just committed an astonishing act of international political vandalism and roped you in against your wishes.

Scotland’s not-prime minister, Nicola Sturgeon, can talk all she wants about having a second referendum and about Scotland becoming independent and staying in Europe. Indeed, it’s hard to see how Scotland could be denied another referendum before something as constitutionally significant as the triggering of article 50.

But, whatever the result of any second vote, the truth is that the United Kingdom union is not like the European Union.Which is a shame: under arrangements more like the EU, Scotland would have a veto over its confused, angry and irrational neighbour, and could save England from itself. It may come to pass that the “UK approach” May has agreed with Sturgeon will end up tantamount to a veto anyway. But otherwise, all Scotland can do is either suck it up or try to leave the UK while trying to stay in the EU.

Which would just make an insanely complex, expensive and pointless process of Brexit just that little bit more insanely complex, expensive and pointless. The harsh truth is that Scottish independence is less likely, practically speaking, if both Scotland and England don’t remain in the EU. Borders with England? No free movement? Tariffs to trade with our biggest partners, sometimes a dog-walk away? Where’s the logic? If England’s out, we’re out too. And extremely, extremely, pissed off.

The great irony is that Scotland did try to get Westminster to see sense on this present and future nightmare years ago. Before the EU referendum, back when Brexiteers were so keen on explaining how the politicians of Brussels were “sclerotic”, “incapable of reform” and “disconnected from the people”, Scots remained less susceptible to these arguments because so many of us have been saying the same thing of Westminster for decades.

Early in the Thatcher years we rejected the Westminster Tories and embraced Labour more tightly. When Labour gained power, and remained disappointingly keen on Thatcher’s sod-you Loadsamoney ideology, we pinned our hopes on the Westminster Lib Dems. We were voting, in part, for electoral reform in Westminster and an end to the two-party system. We hoped England would get it too.

But no. Or not enough, anyway. Scots like me watched, in increasing disbelief, as even after Iraq the English left kept on voting Labour, until its overly generous accommodations with corporate globalisation – which Scots were all too familiar with, thanks to the abrasive greed of none other than the Royal Bank of Scotland, and the naive appeasement of none other than Gordon Brown – helped to crash the economy.

I’d rather be a bad loser than an opportunistic 'winner'. Like most Scots

The Conservatives and then Labour didn’t listen as Scotland rejected them. Neither party is listening even now. The result of the dereliction both parties are guilty of is that the politics of England and Scotland is dominated by nationalist parties: Scotland honestly and directly through the election of an SNP government; England dishonestly and indirectly through the machinations of Ukip and Nigel Farage, who dictated Cameron’s supposedly clever but actually idiotic idea, whereby “the nation” would get to choose whether it stayed in the EU. And now, we are where we are – up the Clyde without a bargepole. D’oh!

Why is Britain leaving the EU? Why do we think free movement is an abomination, at a time when 65 million of our fellow humans are refugees? Because, we’re politically debased, arrogant atavists. Because, decades ago, Westminster rejected the postwar settlement in Europe, and chose instead to align with the US – embracing its anti-Keynsian economics, its belief that it could spread liberal democracy through the barrel of a gun – and generally joining with its former colony to carry on believing that other countries were there to be controlled and exploited, rather than cooperated with for mutual benefit.

And to reject all this cynical hypocrisy, the triumphant barbarism of the Brexiteers’ dictates, is to be “a bad loser”. Who wants to be a bad loser? Not Theresa May, the formerly remain home secretary who now says “Brexit means Brexit” because that’s how to win a leadership contest. I’d rather be a bad loser than an opportunistic “winner”. Like most Scots, I have little in the way of other choices.