The discussion around what are or aren’t Scottish values, or whether such principles even exist, reveals much about our tortured national psyche.

In every country, where people speak freely, there’s a healthy, if sometimes uncomfortable, debate about national values.

The citizenry ask: Is this what we stand for? Should we not hold these principles dear? Why don’t we leave these traditions behind?

Indeed, currently all across Britain, the VE Day celebrations are a clear example of a country considering its values, mythologies, and place in the world.

But Scotland is unique. Rather than speak about our values, we run in fear of the discussion.

In Scotland, a huge swathe of people even deny that Scottish values exist; as if every nation on Earth is permitted beliefs informed by shared tradition, culture and political history - apart from this one.

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It’s confounding. Evidently, there’s the additional tension here of Scottish values being weighed against English values, or British values, or the values of one or other of the constituent parts of the union, Northern Ireland and Wales.

That’s often fraught terrain to navigate, but it doesn’t mean we must flee debate.

Sadly, whatever limited discussion there is that exists around values is co-opted and mutilated by the minority of hardliners on both sides of the constitutional divide.

Pro-independence ultras see only the milk of human kindness flowing through Scottish values, whilst sneering at the values of England.

The same is true in reverse. The ‘too poor, too wee, too stupid’ trope of unionist ultras is clearly hostile to the idea of the better angels of Scottish values, whilst the refusal to see any monsters lurking behind the Union flag is an obvious act of cleaving unquestioningly to ‘British values’.

It’s absurd to maintain the pretence that Scotland is somehow a valueless land; that among all........

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