THE task of producing the final television advert for the Yes campaign in the second referendum on Scottish independence has become a little less daunting. My advice would be to forget any notions of rolling hills and silvery waters; of kenspeckle entertainers proclaiming “Now is the Time”. Dispense with the footage of bright young students in lab coats checking some moving technology at Strathclyde University and resist the urge to tell us again that Scotland is a country open to all.

Instead, let it be a simple production created in the manner of those edgy found-footage films with scared faces and shaky images of an unfolding apocalypse. Perhaps it might be called 24 Hours in Westminster and it would feature a seemingly random selection of words and pictures from the period between 10pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2018 and the same time the following day. There’s Theresa May, the signs of emotional dishevelment lining her drawn features, emerging from her Downing Street bunker to tell us that the cabinet has just backed her Brexit draft withdrawal agreement. There she is again 12 hours later featuring in a live three-hour political evisceration on the floor of the House of Commons, her voice reduced to a croak as she repeats the phrase “take back control”, “take back control”, “take back control”.

This would be interspersed with shots of a familiar cast of hard right spectres flitting in and out of the picture. There’s Nigel Farage, the millionaire former stockbroker, telling us about being the little man taking on the political elite. Now it’s another millionaire, Jacob Rees-Mogg, his grin, like that of his political hero Sir Robert Peel, resembling “the reflection of a sunbeam on a coffin plate”. There are as yet unconfirmed reports that Rees-Mogg has asked his fellow Brexiteers on the European Research Group soon to start working on re-negotiating the Magna Carta.

David Davis, the former Brexit minister, is trying not to grin as he revives memories of Geoffrey Boycott’s straight bat. Now his successor is telling us he felt moved to resign from his post because he could not support the document for which he had been chiefly responsible. Of course we now know that there have been more sightings of Lord Lucan in Brussels these past two years than of this hapless pair. And then there’s the draft withdrawal agreement itself where the name of every country in the world is mentioned save those of Scotland and Freedonia.

In February, 2014, the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, made a speech in London in which he spoke about how the rest of the UK would be diminished if Scotland were to leave. He said: “The UK is the big European success story of this century moving from an island sinking under too much debt, too much borrowing and too much taxation to a country that’s dynamic, exporting, innovating, creating. Scotland is right at the heart of that vision.”

Not even the most fervent of Scottish Unionists could have predicted how quickly Scotland would fall out of the picture. When Mrs May was taken to task at the absence of any mention of Scotland in the 585-page document she replied that this wasn’t necessary as Scotland was part of the United Kingdom. Few in the SNP were expecting anything more than this and certainly not Mike Russell, formerly the Scottish Government’s Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe. Earlier this year he spoke to me about some of his frustrations in this role. These principally arose from the large number of joint ministerial meetings that were cancelled by the UK Government during his tenure. You couldn’t even accuse the UK Government of treating Scotland with contempt during the Brexit process. To treat someone with contempt you must at least engage with them.

Such contempt as the UK Government has shown to Scotland has never been in evidence in its dealings with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party. That relationship was founded on a bribe of hard cash and is maintained in the same way that rich Victorians once conducted illicit relationships with the domestic staff. Thus, ten representatives of a gerrymandered region created for the sole purpose of reinforcing the cultural superiority of one people over another, were able to take ownership of the entire Brexit process. It remains to be seen what further financial inducements the British state will slip furtively into the hands of the DUP to secure their support for the draft agreement.

Accompanying every interview across each of the UK’s main television and radio news channels these last three days a persistent drumbeat could be heard. Its message never ceased: “Taking back control of our borders; taking back control of our laws.” It was espoused by Tory Brexiteers and Remainers alike. It’s easy to forget that they only disagree on minutiae and that they all coalesce around the same over-arching principles: that all dodgy foreigners must be kept out and that the industrial relations enjoyed by 19th century mill-owners must be regained.

The Conservative MP Anne Marie Morris also featured heavily in the political coverage. In 2016, she was one of 70 landlord MPs who voted down an amendment on rental homes being “fit for human habitation”. She and her financier husband once featured in a newspaper series about how affluent families could “limit” their tax liabilities. On Wednesday night she said that of course Brexit would be “bumpy” without admitting that it would be somewhat smoother for her. It’s the same approach deployed by her spiritual mentor in the European Research Group, Mr Rees-Mogg who last month said that the ramifications of Brexit might not be known for 50 years. Only people with very large fortunes and estates can speak with such insouciance about actions and their consequences.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon lashes out over claims she snubbed Brexit talks

What we have witnessed these last few days isn’t really about the entire future of the UK as the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg pronounced with solemn gravity. It’s about what happens when a small group of the UK’s richest and most powerful people quarrel about how best to maintain their hegemony. Carelessly, they also let slip that Scotland and its people occupy not a second of their thoughts.

Supporters of independence are naive if they think that any Scot who is satisfied with this arrangement can ever be persuaded by the SNP's economic arguments. We are dealing with something much deeper and more primeval here.