Rudyard Kipling and Noël Coward seemed alert enough to the consequences when their upper-class countrymen were exposed to conditions of extreme heat in the colonies. Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, each observed at a time when more than just a mere handful of countries bent the knee to London. You can't blame the midday sun, though, for what appears to have afflicted those in the 21st-century Conservative party who strive to keep the dying embers of empire alive.

Those who support the cause of Scottish independence must be weeping with gratitude that this species still exists. Who knows; perhaps a strategy meeting at Millbank or a meeting of the 1922 Committee had voiced concerns that not enough people were being punished for being poor. Perhaps the coalition's bedroom tax and the assorted benefit reprisals being meted out to people who are sick, disabled and elderly are just not going far enough. Let's send for Boris, Theresa and Philip.

Who can doubt that Boris Johnson is the wisest fool in Torydom? There he is, hosting London's Olympic Games haplessly and uproariously, while averting our gaze from the £9bn cost of an event possessing no discernible benefit for the overwhelming majority of his fellow citizens: lovable Boris. And here he is condemning Brussels's long overdue proposals to limit the bonuses of greedy and corrupt bankers. "This is possibly the most deluded measure to come from Europe since Diocletian tried to fix the price of groceries across the Roman empire": mad, bad Boris.

Spoken like a man to whom the recession was a foreign country, as it was for almost everyone in his party. In this way, the mayor of London was seeking to propagate one of the most insidious lies of the Tory right: that there exists an exclusive brotherhood of financial necromancers who alone can breathe life into a nation's economy by working the markets and that we must offer them vast financial tribute to entice them to our shores. Piffle, as Boris would say. This man is considered to be a genuine Tory leadership candidate.

Anxious not to be outdone, Theresa May, the coalition's very own Bellatrix Lestrange, decided to make an early bid for Tory canonisation by promising to abolish the European convention on human rights. Everyone knows that Ms May is often afflicted by a fell malady when she talks about this subject. Last week, though, the UK home secretary made Boris look as harmless as a lollipop man when she pledged that a Conservative government would scrap the Human Rights Act and, perhaps, cancel our European obligations on rights entirely. "We need to stop human rights legislation interfering with our ability to fight crime and control immigration," she said.

We all know what that means. Translated directly into the Conservative mother tongue, it means this: "Send all dodgy-looking eastern European types back to Jibrovia and grant the Metropolitan Police massive wage rises to beat confessions out of people like we did with the miners and the Irish in the 80s. Huzzah!" This woman is also considered to be a genuine Tory leadership candidate.

Surprise leader among the contenders for the annual Enoch Powell prize for maddest Englishman of the year, however, goes to Philip Hammond, the UK defence secretary. Mr Hammond, it would seem, is also a "law and order" man and thinks that, along with "defending the country", it should be our "first priority". Mr Hammond considers this to be such a priority that he wants to go even further than David Cameron and George Osborne in cutting benefits. A further 0.5% saving from the benefits bill would protect the armed forces, he said. Again translated into the Conservative native tongue, this means: "We are pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan but we don't want unemployed soldiers running amok on the streets. And as the military tend to vote for us anyway, we'll keep them in a job by hitting northerners and Scots with a bathroom tax." Why is this man not considered to be a genuine Tory leadership candidate?

Hammond somehow made it over the border to Scotland last Thursday where he made a clumsy attempt to influence the independence debate. After a bizarre appearance at Jeeves, Jingo & Jove, a perjink Edinburgh law firm, the Scottish nationalists are now discussing ways to keep him up here until at least next autumn. Mr Hammond sought to question the ability of the army in an independent Scotland to defend us. "What would they look like? What level of security would they deliver? Who would join them?" he asked. "And would they in any way even begin to match the level of security from which Scotland benefits as part of the United Kingdom today?"

Who cares? An independent Scotland would find itself, overnight, living next door to the most belligerent nation on Earth. Westminster will go the extra million miles to fight in other people's wars. The British army's record away from home in armed conflict is second to none: played about 300; won about 298; lost one (American War of Independence) and drawn one (Ireland). I know Westminster might be a bit peeved for a while following a yes vote in the independence referendum. But in the event of China or Russia taking umbrage at Scotland and annexing the oil rigs, I'm still willing to bet that England will be champing at the bit to give us a hand.

After all, within the past 31 years, they've been in Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Sierra Leone. They even travelled halfway round the world to prevent a sheep station in the South Atlantic from falling into the hands of the Argentinians. It seems that they may soon feel they must do so again. So I hardly think they will think twice about popping up north to help us chase the invaders out.

Consider this also. For hundreds of years, disproportionate multitudes of Scottish soldiers have fallen in England's wars. So it's not as if they don't owe us one.