Nicola Sturgeon couldn’t have been more clear. If the lockdown rules prevented all but essential travel – she had banned herself from visiting a vaccination centre in Aberdeen – then it was completely out of order for the prime minister to make a day trip to Scotland to drop in on a testing laboratory in Glasgow and a vaccine production facility in Livingston. Except that secretly the Scottish first minister must have been delighted that Boris Johnson had found time in his diary to dress up in a lab coat, get in the way of a cluster of technicians as he emptied some boxes, and bump elbows with various members of the army. Not so much Captain Hindsight as General Chaos. Because every time Boris comes to Scotland, the poll ratings of the Scottish National party – or the Scottish Nationalist party, as Johnson insists on calling it – go up a few points. The last 20 opinion polls have shown a majority of Scots in favour of independence. As with Johnson’s previous trip to Scotland, this one had all been done on a need-to-know basis. There had been no itinerary released prior to his arrival, because the last thing that Boris wanted was a whole load of protesters turning up to line the route. The prime minister’s unusual mission was to go to Scotland to avoid meeting as many Scots as possible. If possible, he would go to three locations that had been pre-sanitised to make sure no one gave him a hard time, and get back to London relatively unscathed as soon as possible. And that’s more or less what he achieved. Johnson popped up for a series of pointless photo opportunities and his only moment of slight jeopardy was when he was forced to do the obligatory short interview for the TV news channels. Boris didn’t get off to the best of starts by talking about all the ways the rest of Great Britain had gone out of their way to help the Scots. But then he presumably saw one of his minders doing a throat-cutting gesture and was reminded that the reason he had come to Scotland was to highlight the mutual benefits of the union. So he then came up with something rather more placatory about how wonderful the Scots were. It didn’t sound completely convincing, but then Boris seldom does. Diplomacy and sincerity are not two of his strongest suits. Inevitably, the interview then moved on to Scottish demands for a second independence referendum. “People don’t want another referendum,” he declared, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They were fed up with “pointless constitutional wrangling”. This from a man who had brought the UK to its knees with endless constitutional wrangling over Brexit and had taken Scotland out of the EU against the wishes of most of its inhabitants. Still, that was nothing compared with the hypocrisy of his insistence that he “believed in the power of doing things together”. At times like this you wonder whether Johnson takes everyone for fools, simply has no conscience, or no memory. Or all three. Boris has only ever believed in doing what was good for Boris. Collaboration is a one-way street for any narcissist. Johnson just had time to dodge questions on Desmond Swayne’s lockdown scepticism and “the teething problems” of his sellout of the Scottish fishing fleet before wrapping things up with a near incoherent summary of his day. I quote verbatim: “If [the vaccine is] approved by the MHRA then we will have 60m doses of it by the end of this year for the whole of the British people. And so it’s a success for Scotland. Uh, it’s a success for, uh, Britain and, uh, it’s a success for Britain because it is a success for Scotland. It’s a success for Scotland because it’s a success for Britain. “So, uh, I’m, uh, you know, it was very, very encouraging to see it. That’s, that’s … I may have done some other things as well while I have been here although I can’t immediately recollect what they are. It’s been an action-packed day and always a joy to see you.” This was the UK’s very own Cicero talking. Sturgeon must be counting down the days until Johnson makes his next essential visit to Scotland. Much more of this and indyref 2 will be in the bag.