Can the Scots really be as small-minded, mistrustful and chippy as Spoiling suggests?

Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after a triumphant Yes vote. We meet a foul-mouthed bruiser named Fiona whose strident views and vivid language have propelled her into the public eye during the referendum battle. Her reward is Scotland’s foreign ministry. The most obvious and striking thing about Fiona is her personal ghastliness. A coarse, petulant show-off, over-endowed with self-belief, she has no wit, geniality or political intelligence. Asked how she feels about the birth of Scotland’s liberty, she rasps out her reply like a seagull with tonsilitis. ‘Rebirth!’ Her mistrust of Westminster is deeply engrained. ‘They’re punishing us in the settlement talks,’ she gibbers, ‘because they can.’

Her sense of victimisation is stoked by the play’s absurd storyline. Fiona is due to host a joint press conference with her counterpart, the English foreign secretary, when she discovers that meddling Londoners have doctored her speech and included the word ‘interdependence’. Diplomacy, of course, would never countenance such an abuse. A sovereign nation may say what it pleases without interference from a foreign power. But this plot twist gives Fiona a chance to reveal her view of independence: it’s all a big con engineered by rapacious English schemers who intend to carry on bullying and plundering Scotland in perpetuity. ‘We’re not independent,’ she squawks. ‘We’re indentured.’

Are the Scots really as small-minded and mistrustful as this? The writer, an Ulsterman, may have misread the situation and delivered an appalling libel on Scotland’s political culture. But only last month the play won a Fringe First award from the Scotsman, which suggests there are some up there who applaud this sort of chippy, hate-fuelled sectarianism. And neutrals, like me, are bound to conclude that the Yes campaign harbours a perverse desire to remain in the Union.