Nicola Sturgeon is looking a wee cranky after some committee concluded that she misled the Scots Parliament, and her pants were metaphorically ablaze.

Whenever you see the term ‘committee’, expect to witness a hatful of controversy and vendetta, dressed up as principled authority.

This one appeared biased because it didn’t contain the now mandatory SNP majority that holds sway over every decision north of the border.

Of course, had wee Jimmy Krankie been in Westminster, she would probably have been swiftly cloaked in ermine and slipped a seat in the Lords with all the other expenses-sucking shysters. In the Mother of Parliaments, misleading the House feels so natural, you’d be a fool not to have a stab at it yourself.

All this supposedly dents the prospects of a tartan breakaway, but even moderate savviness marks independence out to be a red herring, if not a red sturgeon.

The threat of independence is what the SNP is all about and where its leverage lies.

Just like Brexit was until the buggers went and did it.

Scotland of course has not the hand with the UK, as the latter held with the EU. That is not to say that that itself was not a weaker spread, but it certainly wasn’t a pair of deuces, an Ally McCoist Panini sticker, Pikachu, and Bertie Bun the baker’s son.

Should the Indy jaunt ever achieve fruition, Scotland will end up being an asset-stripped shell that floats off towards a less than jubilant EU.

While psycho-federalists will doubtless get off on a weaker union, which would lubricate all that barely disguised illiberal Brit-hate, they will – after their disastrous foray in Eastern Europe – not be falling over themselves to take on another lame duck.

But while wee Jimmy visually evokes memories of a less than golden era of 1980s variety (with its own modern-day Ian Krankie tugging on the background strings), it is difficult not to have some admiration for the articulate and switched-on Sturgeon.

And not simply for that fabulous, fist-pumping frenzy that heralded the departure of the egregious Jo Swansong at the 2019 election.

In fact, Ruth Davidson and Anas Sarwar both also outshine their Westminster counterparts at a canter.

I have long since been an advocate of the position that voters are becoming increasingly drawn to competent politicians even if their policies are disagreeable. It just seems infinitely more agreeable to have competence over clowning even if that means that the final policy outcomes are less than optimal.

Indeed, it conjures up a delightful alternative ending for the debate on Scottish independence.

Why not maintain the Union and re-centre the UK’s Parliament in Edinburgh?

That would be a piping-hot, deep-fried Mars bar for where the sun doesn’t shine.