The Tory party’s attitude towards Scotland is as stupid as it is cynical

I preferred Grant Shapps when, as Michael Green, he was just another loathsome internet huckster peddling obviously quackish get-rich-quick schemes.

He did less damage then. That is, he played a smaller number of people for fools back then. This morning Shapps, the Conservative party chairman, made the remarkable claim that “Alex Salmond is threatening to undermine a government chosen by the British people”. (Note to Mr Shapps: the Scottish people are British too. We had, as you may recall, a vote on this. Quite recently.)

I assume Shapps is the member for Codswallop-on-Stilts because this is nonsense. Worse than that, it is dangerous nonsense. Which in turn means it is hard to decide if it is worse that Shapps does not know this or that he does know it and does not care.

In the first-place, Shapps’s remarks are constitutionally-illiterate. It is parliament that determines the government, not the people. True, this usually – though not always – means the government is formed by the party winning the largest number of seats.