Having trashed Scotland’s public services and squandered billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash, no wonder John Swinney wants to talk about anything other than his pitiful record.

Which helps to explain why he wants to make the Scottish parliament election all about one thing – independence.

He admits that he’s dreamed of breaking up the United Kingdom since he was a teenager, and joined the SNP in 1979.

Almost half a century later he remains spellbound by the ideology of nationalism in defiance of hard facts and simple logic.

Just like his ex-boss Nicola Sturgeon, he will stop at nothing to shatter the bonds of the UK.

He has recently issued ominous warnings about his ‘secret plan’ to secure another divisive independence referendum.

But he refuses to tell the people of Scotland what exactly he intends to do if he secures a majority, as he boasts that he will.

Despite his peculiar lifelong obsession with making Scotland poorer and weaker, Swinney’s latest gambit took my breath away.

He admitted that the SNP would team up with Sinn Fein.

Swinney said that working alongside the Irish nationalists, and Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru, would change the UK irreversibly. The prospect of all three UK devolved administrations being controlled by nationalist parties is a nightmare scenario that should terrify all Unionists.

I will fight tooth and nail over the next ten days to stop Swinney and the SNP getting a majority.

And his willingness to join forces with Sinn Fein has made me more determined.

Behind Swinney’s carefully curated image as a sensible and safe pair of hands is a calculating politician who oozes with cynical opportunism.

After all, this is the man who hatched the deal to welcome the dangerously extremist Greens into the SNP government.

It should therefore come as no surprise that Swinney should also seek to form an axis with Sinn Fein.

No party or individual is deemed too toxic in furtherance of the SNP’s separatist agenda.

But openly courting the political wing of the IRA is surely beyond the pale for most decent Scots.

Like me, Swinney must vividly remember the bloodthirsty carnage inflicted by IRA terrorists over many dark decades.

The innocent civilians – men, women and children – slaughtered by cowards in balaclavas, detonating bombs from a safe distance.

Perhaps Swinney needs reminded about the three off-duty Scottish soldiers from the Royal Highland Fusiliers who were shot dead by the IRA in 1971, when they had just been out enjoying a drink.

Only last year a relative of one of those soldiers spoke powerfully about how the scars will never heal and how his family are still seeking answers about what happened.

While Scotland escaped any direct IRA atrocities during the Troubles, unlike other cities such as Manchester and Omagh, we were not immune to the devastation they caused.

My colleague Jackson Carlaw spoke in he Scottish Daily Mail earlier this week of experiencing first-hand the terrorist activities of the IRA when he was at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984.

The IRA planted a bomb in an attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. And they came dangerously close to doing so. There were five victims who lost their lives that evening including the wife of Donald MacLean, who was the president of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association.

Jackson spoke movingly in parliament in October 2024 to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Grand Hotel and told how he will never forget having to help shell-shocked survivors staggering from the wreckage of the bombed hotel.

Those who remember the Troubles will be disgusted and terrified at the thought of John Swinney working in tandem with Sinn Fein to plot the break-up of the world’s most successful Union. It makes my blood run cold.

Thank goodness Northern Ireland has been largely peaceful and stable since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. But let’s never forget that senior figures who deployed bombs and bullets used Sinn Fein as a political cover and have much blood on their hands.

Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf already laid the groundwork for a SNP-Sinn Fein alliance by inviting Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill to Bute House for discussions.

Now it seems Swinney wants to get even cosier with them. He’s pushing at an open door.

Sinn Fein MP John Finucane confirmed his party will work with anyone who wants to break up the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland doesn’t have elections on May 7, but Scotland does, and pro-UK voters can send the strongest possible message to Swinney that they will reject his unholy alliance.

Swinney wants a referendum as soon as 2028. He wants the next Scottish parliament to be just like the last, by plunging it into yet more constitutional chaos.

And if he’s willing to work with Sinn Fein, then he should come clean to Scots on whether he backs their plans to hold an Irish border poll by 2030.

That is all nationalists care about, no matter in which part of the UK they wield power.

It is what motivates them each day. They don’t really care about helping people with the cost of living crisis.

They have no interest in growing our economy or fixing the permanent crisis in our NHS.

They only want to succeed in ripping up the bonds that have cemented us and served us for centuries.

We all have family and friends in other parts of the United Kingdom.

Some of us even go to work across the Scotland-England border each day.

But the nationalists are blinded by the notion that they are somehow better and by their belief that the United Kingdom isn’t working for Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales.

And whatever past sins you have committed, as long as you are unrepentant on wanting independence, then all is forgiven.

Even if those sins include the slaughter of innocents.

Some Unionists and apparent experts have been trying to pretend the Union isn’t on the line at this Holyrood election.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The threat of an SNP majority is real.

And John Swinney would use a majority to immediately demand another independence referendum.

With the weakest Prime Minister in history residing at Number 10, do you trust Sir Keir Starmer to stand up to John Swinney?

I certainly don’t. The Labour Party leader has spent his two years in office breaking his promises, dizzily conducting endless U-turns.

The Left-wing Islington lawyer is in office – but not in power.

And if John Swinney achieves his majority, as he is so arrogantly predicting, then he will seize on Starmer’s weakness.

And every step of the way he will be supported by his new friends in Sinn Fein.

But memories run deep of the closest of bonds between despicable IRA terrorists and their political wing, Sinn Fein.

I care deeply about protecting our United Kingdom and I’m sickened at the thought of Swinney cosying up to Sinn Fein.

And if you are too then the best way of stopping that is to use your peach ballot paper to vote for the Scottish Conservatives on May 7 and stop nationalism in its tracks.