Am I the boy who cried wolf? There is certainly a case for thinking so. Numerous times over the past decade I have warned of a grave threat to the Union. And yet here we are, in 2025, with Scotland still safe within the United Kingdom.

Down the years I have raised the alarm about a number of wolves. Brexit could mean the break up of Britain. Boris Johnson as prime minister was an existential threat to the UK. Liz Truss could be the straw that broke the Union’s back.

Each crisis passed without the Union Jack being ceremonially lowered from the flagpole above Edinburgh Castle.

So have I learnt my lesson? Will I cry wolf no more? No, because this time there is an actual wolf, honest. This wolf is red in tooth and claw, all too real, and almost at the door.

I am talking about Nigel Farage. On Saturday morning his lupine grin was on the front page of The Times Magazine. The headline ran: “Will I be the next PM? There’s a good chance.” It was enough to put me off my muesli.

Why, you might reasonably ask, is the danger to the Union posed by this wolf real while the others turned out to be a theoretical threat, at best?

The difference, I think, is between national and international. With the benefit of hindsight previous threats were local turbulence, limited to British politics. With goodwill and good sense they could be remedied, or at least ameliorated, at the British ballot box.

The threat now is very different. Farage is part of a convulsion felt across the entirety of the western world, with cynical right-wing populists sharing a playbook that exploits anger and fear. This is a wolf pack.

Of course, there will be those who scoff and insist this is fearmongering. These people will happily ignore the evidence of their own eyes, along with the evidence of history, and persuade themselves Farage is no threat at all, to the Union or anybody else.

These are frogs eager to be boiled. Turn up the gas higher, they say. Come on in, the water’s fine.

I tell you this: if Farage gets into Downing Street, public opinion in Scotland will shift substantially and perhaps decisively to the independence cause. Why? Because there will be those who persuade themselves that there is a get-out for Scotland: that with Europe increasingly governed by the hard right, America in the grip of Magamania, and Westminster falling into the clammy clutch of the Faragists, independence allows Scotland an opportunity to escape a world gone mad.

The irony is that independence supporters would be following the advice of one of the instigators of this new world order. JD Vance, the US vice-president, recently earned the wrath of the Pope for claiming Catholic doctrine, in particular the 4th-century teachings of St Augustine, justified America First. Closing the borders and withdrawing from the international order was, he said, an example of ordo amoris, or rightly ordered love.

“There’s this old-school [concept] — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world,” Vance said.

I had two reactions to this. One, as someone whose early schooling was provided by Augustinians, I felt personally offended. Two, I realised I had heard a version of Vance’s argument from SNP politicians countless times down the years, justifying a mindset one might call Scotland First. Oor ain folk come first.

The Pope’s answer to Vance can be read as a challenge to a conventional Scottish nationalist mindset. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” said Francis. The true ordo amoris, he said, lay in the parable of the Good Samaritan and “the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception”.

Yes, even the English.

Faced with the prospect of Farage as prime minister, the temptation for Scottish nationalists is to say: “This is not my fight.” This is a powerful argument and we should not underestimate it. It speaks to a deep human instinct, albeit one not authored by our better angels.

How do we counter the case for independence as an escape from the hard right? I would gently suggest to such nationalists that they are fooling themselves. There is no safe harbour in this storm.

If the moral arguments I have outlined feel a bit too ripe, a touch too reminiscent of Thought For The Day on Radio 4’s Today programme, other rationales are available. I stopped being a Catholic a long time ago. These days my preferred moral framework is more secular, if a little bit out of fashion. I am talking about solidarity. Ultimately we are all in this together, and unity is strength.

Given the rise of right-wing nationalist populism, what is your response? Is it to walk away and leave the fight to someone else, saying “not my problem, guv”? Because that is what Scottish independence would represent. It would be Scotland walking by on the other side of the street, with eyes averted. I’m all right, Jock.

Or is it to regard this as your fight as much as anybody else’s? Even, or perhaps particularly, when the immediate threat to us in Scotland is not as obvious as it is south of the border?

The skies are darkening everywhere. Scotland’s centre-left has a choice. Walk away or stay and fight. What’s it to be? The wolf is at the door.