Like the Japanese soldier who stayed in the jungle for decades – refusing to believe that World War II was over – the SNP is in a state of denial.

He refuses to accept that independence is dead and continues to produce stupid articles about how the breakup of Britain would work.

The problem is that it is not the party that produces these studies but the civil service, which means that it is hard-pressed taxpayers who pay for them.

It’s the greatest fantasy epic since The Lord of the Rings – or the White Paper before the 2014 referendum – except even Tolkien wouldn’t have imagined something this crazy.

Forget the moribund economy, failing schools and endless NHS waiting lists, the real priority of the mandarins and their lackeys is to strategize for a world that doesn’t exist.

As the Scottish Mail revealed on Sunday, the scale of spending on the separatist obsession was discovered after a two-and-a-half year battle with the SNP government.

It is not surprising that, given the secretive state of the Nationalists, the SNP attempted to cover up the information, but ultimately had to give up and publish documents revealing the vast amount of resources devoted to their independence mission doomed to failure.

There are a multitude of memos and briefings about Scotland leaving the UK – almost as if the majority of voters had not decisively rejected the proposal a decade ago.

SNP continues to obsess over independence while public services collapse

Even some of the unfortunates responsible for emptying this hold warned that the exercise had gone too far.

The Building A New Scotland series of articles was originally intended to cover 31 separate topics, but some officials appear to have thought that was too much.

So far, 13 articles have been published on issues such as defense and migration, with a budget of £216,000.

The grandly named Division of Elections and Freedom of Information has been tasked with working out the arrangements for holding another referendum.

Salaries in the Orwellian-sounding, separation-focused Constitutional Futures division total £1.34m this year.

As of May 16, there were 19 civil servants working there, with the highest paid being a deputy director, earning up to £117,800 a year.

There is a touch of black comedy in the revelation that Ken Thomson, the former senior civil servant who asked ministers to delete WhatsApp messages during the Covid pandemic, was appointed to advance the cause of independence.

He boasted that “my middle name is plausible deniability” and warned officials to delete the phone conversations.

First Minister John Swinney has played an important role in the Scottish Government since the SNP came to power in 2007.

Mr Thomson – who retired last year – is a former Scottish Government director-general for strategy and external affairs, whose salary can reach £134,999.

In 2022, he was accused of boasting that dividing the UK was his job, which was dismissed by official spokespeople at the time as an “informal comment” – but we now know he was saying the truth.

Does anyone really believe the gut feeling that civil servants are paid handsomely to write?

One of many tedious thoughts on independence costs an average of £10.85 for each download.

It was the maritime sector and £14,057 was spent on it – but it was only downloaded 1,295 times.

Remember, the SNP government’s defeat in the Supreme Court over the power to hold an independence referendum also cost the exchequer £251,729.

None of this is defensible, especially in these difficult times of financial black holes, budget cuts – and the possibility of further tax hikes.

In November last year, nationalists published a document setting out plans for increased immigration to an independent Scotland.

The proposed points-based system would allow migrants to get extra credits that would help them settle here if they first learn Gaelic – a strange condition in a country where there are no monoglot speakers of Gaelic.

But ministers admitted the document did not set out a comprehensive immigration plan as it was only designed to provide “direction”.

Well, the “sense of direction” is obvious: we are on the path to economic ruin thanks to a clueless administration you wouldn’t trust to organize a tea party, while our political masters waste time and money to legislate for a parallel system. universe.

The final article in the Building a New Scotland series, published in April, focused on justice, including a plan to decriminalize drugs for personal use as part of efforts to reduce drug-related deaths – which remain at the highest level in Europe.

A disastrous general election result for the nationalists in July could have dissuaded ministers from publishing more of these documents.

Yet the SNP government said it would continue to do so, saying it had a “clear mandate” to help people “make an informed choice about their future”.

The Greens are now putting pressure on John Swinney to maintain his focus on independence in return for approving the Scottish budget next month.

Former allies of the nationalists were driven out of government by Humza Yousaf – an act which led to his own downfall.

This meant the so-called “independence majority” at Holyrood no longer existed – but Patrick Harvie and his Marxist gang are still trying to pull the strings.

Scottish Greens finance spokesman Ross Greer has warned his party would find it “impossible” to support the SNP if it reduced the “already modest amount” it is spending on trying to divide the UK.

It seems strange that the SNP needs encouragement to step up its efforts to end the Union, but Mr Swinney is walking a tightrope.

Talk of independence may be risky in the run-up to the 2026 Holyrood elections, as it proves a turn-off to many Scots who would prefer he and his colleagues concentrate on the more mundane business of governing the country.

But he may well need the support of the Greens to pass the budget, while Stephen Flynn – the leader of the SNP group in the House of Commons – is clearly on the move and has his eyes on the leadership.

Red meat must be provided to the cores of the party, which means that even more money will have to be devoted to the vital work of the propagandists.

Decentralization has been hijacked by separatists and the result is almost 20 years of decline, failure and botched reforms.

It is time for the UK Government to draw a line in the sand and send a clear signal that the SNP cannot be allowed to indulge in more of this madness.

Whether Sir Keir Starmer has the courage to intervene is another question – but his arguments are indisputable.

The ruthless politicization of the civil service is a blatant abuse of power by a party that has taken us all for fools – but which may be about to pay a high price for dragging our democracy into disarray. mud.