POWER, wrote Lord Acton, tends to corrupt. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. I lived in Scotland for seven years, on and off, before settling in Dorset. Over that period I saw the Scottish National Party morph from a party that was determined to use the powers of Holyrood to their fullest to the complacent, idealess and now corrupt monolith they are today.

I’ve written many times on the merits of devolution – local and national – but, as I see it, devolution’s main stumbling block remains the propensity of devolved leaders to simply blame their own failures on a lack of even more devolved powers.

The SNP in Scotland has perfected this art. Since the 2014 independence referendum, rather than use the even greater powers it has, instead it’s deployed the bulk of the Scottish civil service on agitating for more. Meanwhile, literary standards have declined and drug deaths have tripled while taxes have increased more than in England.

This month we witnessed the recent first minster’s husband Peter Murrell, chief executive of the SNP for a period spanning three decades, be arrested for suspected misuse of campaign finances. Conspiracy theories will abound for years around how Sturgeon exited her role a mere week before her husband was arrested. I say years because Scotland will have to endure another three years of this clapped out, one-trick pony party before it can vote them out.

Two events in England also moved me to comment this week.

As an Anglo-Indian, I am uncomfortable with the singling out of Pakistani men by Indian heritage members of cabinet while they reflect on the failure – their failure in government – to stop child sexual exploitation.

As the NSPCC has commented, predators do not come from one background, and the focus on one race could create blind spots when tackling child abuse.

Their remarks are also highly incendiary considering recent Indian and Pakistani violence in Leicester, and damages Britain’s relationship with Pakistan. Their dog whistle politics has to stop.

Speaking of which, spare a thought for South Dorset MP Richard Drax. He has been rewarded for his years of anti-immigration rhetoric with a barge of asylum seekers moored at Portland in his own constituency.

Drax, on whose family plantations as many as 30,000 slaves died – according to the University of the West Indies – in terrible conditions, had nothing to say on the conditions in which the asylum seekers would be confined while his government plodded through their asylum claims.

No – his criticism was that the barge was in the wrong place. In his back yard. That’s compassionate conservatism for you.