The right have no intention of losing power, and will preside over the breakup of the country to remain in office. Look at the bile being flung in Scotland. Last week the Sun, now more or less openly working as Conservative Central Office’s propaganda unit, published a mock-up of Nicola Sturgeon in a skimpy tartan skirt, riding Miley Cyrus-style on a wrecking ball labelled Tartan Barmy. For anyone who naively believed that sexism had been purged from Britain’s political discourse, it was instructive.

But this is part of a wider political crusade: to prevent Labour forming a government with support from the SNP. It is a crusade that will surely culminate in the final dissolution of the United Kingdom.

Barring a seismic political upset, the SNP will sweep Scotland in a few weeks’ time. In the 1950s most Scots were voting for the Unionists, the Tories’ sister party, until the nation decisively plumped for Labour. The wheel has turned again, and this time the SNP are the beneficiaries.

Many Labour MPs, believing their voters would never abandon them, allowed the emergence of modern-day rotten boroughs, not listening to the concerns of their voters. Labour’s decision to form a strategic alliance with the Tories during last year’s referendum rather than have a separate campaign of its own has proved to be a mistake of historic proportions. The no campaign traded on a politics of fear – with interventions by major corporations, egged on by government – which has left a profound resentment.

It is difficult to overstate the fury of erstwhile Labour voters, who often label their old party “red Tories”, and who have no intention of returning. They have the zealousness of the convert and the bitterness of ex-lovers.

Because of the great Scottish collapse, a Labour majority is now almost unthinkable. And even with Liberal Democrat support, Labour will probably find they have too few MPs to form a stable coalition. So without an arrangement with the SNP, Ed Miliband is unlikely to find himself in office.

Both the SNP and Labour have ruled out a coalition, which was never going to happen. But the Tories and their media allies are running a campaign of fear about a Labour government propped up by SNP votes. If Scotland votes en masse for the SNP, its electorate will be told that their decisive democratic choice is a political pariah that has no legitimate place in governing the country. Given that support for independence is driven in part by resentment at a seemingly contemptuous Westminster elite, what better way of driving Scotland even further away?

Labour will be savaged for allying itself with those who wish to dismantle the country. But the cause of Scottish independence will be best bolstered by a Tory government. For most Scots, Toryism is an alien and hostile political force. Scots vote time and time again to reject the Tories in great numbers, and yet get lumbered with Tory governments anyway. A vote for the Tories is a vote to dissolve Britain.

If I were an SNP strategist, I would be praying for another five years of David Cameron, George Osborne, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Gove. Far riskier for the SNP to be potentially tainted by propping up a Labour government, or for inadvertently demonstrating that Scotland can maximise its influence within the UK.

If I were an SNP strategist, I would be praying for another five years of Cameron, Osborne, Duncan Smith and Gove

If Labour lose, the right within the party is preparing a narrative that an alleged lurch to the left was responsible. The idea that Labour could have prevented a collapse in Scotland by being more Blairite is, of course, risible: Labour are tarnished precisely because they are seen to have joined forces with the Tories, and for failing to present a viable or coherent alternative to them.

Under Sturgeon’s formidable leadership, the SNP are carving out the clear progressive message that really should belong to Labour: anti-austerity, anti-nuclear weapons, pro-welfare state: and they have abandoned their flirtation with Osbornomics by dropping their pledge to cut corporation tax.

The real scrutiny about post-election coalition deals should focus on the Tories. Do they want a stitch-up with the xenophobes of Ukip, who outflank the Tories in their desire to privatise, slash services and cut taxes on the rich? Or the sectarian fundamentalists of Ulster’s DUP, peddlers of homophobic bigotry who once ran the “Save Ulster from sodomy” campaign? Such a government would be the biggest boost to the cause of Scottish independence in history.

The fanning of English resentment against Scotland. The contempt for the will of the Scottish electorate. The prospect of a Tory-led hard-right coalition that will repulse the Scottish people. Yes, the breakup of the United Kingdom beckons. And it will be the right who are responsible.