For years we’ve been watching as the UK’s assets and national institutions are sold off for a fraction of their true value, while debts that are so massive we can barely comprehend them are racked up.

These debts are so ridiculously, inconceivably huge that your grandkids will still be paying for them.

Maybe the latest opinion polls showing Tory popularity crashing has prompted this shameless economic vandalism. Maybe polling showing a majority in support of Scottish independence has triggered their immoral cash-grab.

The Conservatives have found out their financial mismanagement is about to lead to the UK’s bankruptcy and, as quickly as they can, they are maxing out every credit card they can lay a greasy hand on while selling off all of the country’s valuable property and assets to their mates for pennies. And not just to their mates, but to themselves through their private offshore companies.

The pound is plummeting against all the major world currencies like the Euro and the US dollar. The Bank of England’s interest rate is at a 14-year high and climbing, making your bills higher while inflation is running away at a claimed 10 per cent. Check your shopping receipts, however, and you will see it’s actually much, much higher.

How can we be in a fuel crisis when the UK, and Scotland in particular, are so obviously abundantly energy rich? Could it be because oil is bought and sold in dollars, and the pound continues to lose value against those dollars?

Why is the UK government permitting gas and electricity bills to double or triple, yet handing billions to the energy companies instead of nationalising them?

If you know who owns the energy companies, then you’ll have your answer to that. Truss’s answer, she proudly but unwisely tells us, is more trickle-down economics.

Debunked over decades of experience, just like austerity was, it means tens of thousands of pounds of tax cuts for the rich, and some crumbs for the rest of us. The billionaire-owned Tory-loving media will play the usual divide and conquer card and it’ll be all about how England is better off with its crumbs while Scotland, they claim, pays much higher taxes, so focus on that and forget about bankers’ bonuses and the rampant greed it causes.

The reality is that for most folk, the much-glorified tax cuts couldn’t even cover their prescription charges, never mind free bus travel, tuition-free education, free personal care and nursing, or any of the other advantages to living in Scotland.

The Tories are bailing out before the rotten ship they’ve holed finally sinks. Scotland doesn’t have to go down with their corrupt and bankrupt ship. We can choose the liferaft of independence.