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In certain parts of the country, the 2017 general election is viewed as Theresa May’s coronation.

Against an ineffectual Labour party, the Tories will undoubtedly make further gains in England and Wales.

May will shore up her Brexit mandate and Labour will be routed before the real battle begins over the future of centre-left politics in the UK.

When she decided to go to the country, the Prime Minister knew these outcomes were pretty much guaranteed.

(Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

But her appearance in Banchory yesterday tells another story about her intentions.

And it’s one that many Brexit-obsessed London-based commentators have missed.

With a massive victory south of the border all but assured, May has been given what amounts to a free hit at the SNP.

The fact she made her first appearance in Scotland in a seat where Nicola Sturgeon’s party hold a majority of more than 7000 sends its own message – seats like this are up for grabs.

(Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

May has nothing much to lose in Scotland and is gunning for the Nationalists.

She wants to derail Sturgeon’s plans for a second independence referendum and it’s safe to deduce that the Conservative Party’s expensive and sophisticated polling operation is telling her she has every chance.

May didn’t turn up in the SNP’s heartlands by accident yesterday.

And the words she chose against a background of Union flag placards were carefully chosen too, despite their incendiary tone.

“We want to ensure that we build a more secure and united nation,” she told an audience of party activists.

“That means taking action against the extremists who would divide us and standing up against the separatists who want to break up our country.”

Meanwhile, in England, May – following a deliberately unambitious strategy laid out by adviser Lynton Crosby – sells a scare story involving Jeremy Corbyn in a coalition government propped up by the SNP.

It’s hogwash and she knows it. If there was a scintilla of a chance that she’d be voted out of office, there would be no election.

There is no meaningful race to No10 – the Tories have it in the bag.

Their early manoeuvres tell us that the prize, as they see it, is to strangle Indyref2 at birth. On June 9, with the UK picture being one of not who wins but by how many, much of the intrigue is likely to be focused on Scotland.

May will have a number of seats in mind that she can sell to the public as proof that Scotland has chosen unionism and that a referendum should not take place.

(Image: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

In the weeks to follow, it is likely that this will become planted in the imaginations of the electorate, setting a clear framework for an independence referendum by proxy to unfold.

Voters shouldn’t need many further reasons to reject the Tories but this is one.

When Scotland rejected Brexit, it placed the country in a position of genuine constitutional turmoil. We said at the time that Sturgeon’s wish to hold a second referendum was entirely legitimate. Nothing which has happened since has altered that view.

It doesn’t mean that the Sunday Mail backs a Yes vote in theory – just Sturgeon’s right to ask the country to decide if she so wishes.

The electorate have nothing to fear from such a vote.

Brexit was a referendum no one in Scotland had much appetite for.

It was called by the Tories for political reasons and plunged the UK into a form of political inertia.

Now voters are being asked to go to the polls again to get May further out of the soup with her misleading appeal to act in the national interest.

(Image: Michal WachucikMICHAL WACHUCIK/AFP/Getty Images)

Voters who may be unionist by instinct should tread cautiously before throwing their lot in with the Tories.

A refuelled Conservative Party with an increased mandate will not be minded to do Scotland many favours.

Anyone in any doubt about that should think back to David Cameron’s Downing Street performance the morning after the 2014 independence referendum when he immediately pledged a rethink on English votes for English laws.

If the Tories get into double figures in Scotland, they will form the least-restricted right-wing government this country has had since Margaret Thatcher resigned.

No coalition partners to appease. No small majority to be wary of. No soft backbenchers to mollify. Back in the game in Scotland in a major way, possibly as a resurgent second-largest party.

That is what May really seeks. When she speaks of the national interest, this is the outcome she has in mind.

To do so, she will require disaffected Labour voters, fearing a second referendum, to jump from red to blue. They should be extremely wary.

Scotland has more to fear from this type of rampant Conservative government than it does from another independence referendum.