Following on from Ian Murray’s last night, we received another election leaflet from an alert reader today, this time one delivered to them by the Scottish Conservatives.

Let’s just look at that highlighted section again.

Now, “the SNP should try to improve schools and grow the economy, and we’ll oppose them every step of the way” initially sounds like a comedy misprint. Except the thing is, it’s what the Tories actually do.

Roughly 99 times out of every 100 the Scottish Government brings forward a policy proposal intending to improve the lives of Scottish people, the Scottish Conservatives (and the other Unionist parties, and often the Greens) vote against it.

They voted against the budget, as they’ve done for years. They voted against creating a single Scotland-wide board for all enterprise and skills agencies. They voted against reforming the council tax to take more money from wealthier homeowners to raise money for schools. They voted against anti-sectarianism laws, perhaps for reasons rather close to home. And so on.

It is, of course, perfectly right and proper for oppositions to oppose the government. But every time that the SNP actually tries to “get on with the day job”, as the Unionist parties constantly demand, the Unionist parties all then immediately try to STOP them getting on with the day job by every means at their disposal.

(Ironically, this means that in effect the matter of whether bills get passed or not is placed largely in the hands of the Greens, who are pro-indy and pretty much the exact ideological opposite of the Tories in every respect. Strange bedfellows.)

It’s one of the oddest paradoxes in politics, and it’s more or less unique to Scotland. The party that’s won three crushing landslide election victories in a row in pursuit of independence is ordered by vastly less successful and less popular parties to give up on independence and instead get on with enacting other policies that those same parties don’t want enacted either and will do everything in their power to block.

The Tories and Labour and Lib Dems, of course, want Tory and Labour and Lib Dem policies enacted instead. But since they were all hopelessly thrashed out of sight in all of those elections, they have no conceivable right to have that happen, or to expect it. That’s how democracy works. Want your policies put into practice? Win elections.

The Scottish Parliament was expressly designed to avoid majorities, which is a good idea when the political sphere isn’t completely and implacably polarised on a single issue overriding all others. Constantly trying to prevent that issue from being resolved can only lead to a perpetual stalemate in which nothing can ever get done.

Whether the Unionists like it or not, it will take a second referendum to genuinely put the constitutional issue to bed for a long time. The pro-independence parties have an unarguably legitimate case over Brexit. If they were to lose a second vote even under those circumstances, it’s all but impossible to imagine anything justifying another attempt in the forseeable future. Standing on such a manifesto would surely exhaust the patience of the electorate.

Nicola Sturgeon would very likely resign, with no obvious successor in place. No new SNP leader would dare risk a catastrophic third defeat unless the polls were utterly overwhelmingly in their favour, and heaven only knows what scenario could possibly bring that about if Brexit didn’t do it. Normal politics would resume, with a chastened and damaged SNP and a genuine prospect of someone else forming the government.

Yet faced with their only plausible chance of power the Unionist parties are in absolute panic. Casting aside even the pretence of having any other policies, they scream “NO SECOND REFERENDUM!” until they’re hoarse, frantically hoping that if they bellow it loudly and long enough the problem will go away and they can get on with the easy job of kneejerk opposition to everything.

Scotland is trapped in a permanent chokehold because the Conservatives (chiefly) are paralysed by fear – fear of defeat, fear of the voters AND fear of victory, which might bring responsibility. As their newest leaflet admits, all they know how to do is say No. It’s time they grew up, and let Scotland do the same.