he Conservative party is sometimes afraid of losing office, but never doubts its right to be in government. It draws resilience from a presumption that Tory rule is the country’s default setting – the natural state from which other parties are a faddish deviation. Boris Johnson is the incarnation of that belief. He was carried to Downing Street by the conviction that it was his destiny, and by a charismatic way of making that idea contagious. But charisma is a spell not easily recast once broken. Mourning that misplaced magic was an undeclared theme of the prime minister’s keynote speech today, delivered online to a virtual conference. Johnson made wistful references to the absence of an appreciative crowd. He also used his recovery from Covid-19 as a metaphor for national renewal after the pandemic, rejecting claims of enduring physical and, by implication, political debilitation. Leaders in possession of a “mojo” do not have to declare it so explicitly. Passages in the speech that emphasised Johnson’s attachment to private enterprise and abhorrence of an over-mighty state all sounded like reassurance to the faithful, suggesting a fear that faith is waning. Doubtless it would have worked in a packed auditorium, eliciting the ovations he craves. But it is early in the term to be seeking the solace of an activist comfort zone. In that respect, the more significant conference speech was delivered three days earlier – by Douglas Ross, the party’s leader in Scotland. It did not get as much attention in England as it deserved, which proves the point that Ross was making. He warned against “defeatism and disinterest” in the battle to save the union from nationalism. It was the speech of an opposition leader challenging his own side to snap out of complacency, which is unusual for a party that won a general election only 10 months ago. But the Tories did not win in Scotland and they will not win next May’s Holyrood poll. The upper limit of Ross’s ambition is to deprive the SNP of a majority. Viewed from that angle, it is plainly untrue that conservatism is the default setting for government in Britain. It isn’t true in Wales either. Nor does it stack up in London, Manchester, Liverpool or any seat of government where Tories routinely sit in the minority. The centralised character of the British state and the tight media orbit around Westminster sustain a myth that the party with command of the Commons speaks for the country. People who do not see themselves reflected in that ruling party then become steadily alienated, and attach themselves to politics that rejects the centre for its remote arrogance. In Scotland, that dynamic is accelerated by aversion to a brand of posh English conceit, the pungent essence of which flows from Johnson. The Scottish Tory leader could not say aloud that the prime minister is more problem than solution. The point had to be contained in the wider observation that Westminster parochialism bolsters support for Scottish independence – supplying fresh grievance that Nicola Sturgeon uses to distract from her own failures in government. “The case for separation is now being made more effectively in London than it ever could in Edinburgh,” Ross said. In private, Scottish Tories complain about wilful ignorance among English Conservative MPs, who too often see Scotland as implacably alien. (It does not help that their main exposure to Scottish political opinion comes from SNP contributions to Commons debates.) In some cases, impatience with Scottish nationalism shades into aggressive counter-nationalism: the view that devolution is a scam to siphon off money from English pockets to ungrateful Scots. The more common problem is the casual anglo-centrism that makes no effort to understand the contours of Scottish identity and has no vocabulary to describe its value as a component in British identity. Or, as Ross put it: “They too often see Britishness and Englishness as one and the same.” That conflation suits Sturgeon, since it implies that true Scottishness can only be fulfilled in emancipation from rule by Westminster. Johnson doesn’t want to be the prime minister who broke the union, but he has no idea how to mitigate the threat. If he did, he would not have loaded the internal market bill with free ammunition for nationalists. The draft law uses the repatriation of regulatory powers from Brussels as cover for a pan-British nation-building agenda: it fashions Brexit into a paddle for rowing against the tide of devolution. There is an essential legal requirement to harmonise UK market rules outside the EU, but it takes real ineptitude to do it in a way that reinforces core SNP complaints about English high-handedness, months before a Scottish election. Yet many Tories think it is a brilliant wheeze. The theory is that new centralised spending powers will be used to prove the union’s value, as if “made in the UK” branding on a bridge will clear the scales from pro-independence voters’ eyes. That strategy would be crass at the best of times. It is wildly counterproductive when the propagandising scheme is smuggled into the same bill that Johnson is using to repudiate the Brexit withdrawal agreement, poisoning negotiations with Brussels. It enacts the perfect synthesis of Tory contempt for Scottish legal autonomy and pro-European sensibility. Conservative ministers say with a straight face that Brexit strengthens the union. They can hardly say the truth. One of the best arguments against Scottish independence is to note how much harder, more bitter and expensive it would be than the separation of Britain from the EU. The last four years are a terrible warning against such folly. That is not a line available to a party that has no problem with recklessly ripping up unions, as long as they are European. Johnson hardly mentioned Brexit in his speech. It is still a pressing issue for the country, but it is not his political comfort zone any more. He could not say much about his handling of the pandemic either, beyond complaining that it is all a bit of a drag and promising that it will one day be over. He wants to fast-forward beyond the difficult present to focus on a distant horizon – when problems for which he takes no responsibility are solved by a mysterious process for which he gets all the credit. That is not just a quirk of the prime minister’s narcissistic personality. He holds his office thanks to the unique institutional self-confidence of the Conservative party: its unshakable sense of entitlement to power. That is a source of formidable strength … right up until the point where it becomes a crippling weakness. It feeds the appetite for power that wins elections; and breeds the complacency that loses them. Such is the natural life cycle of Tory governments. Johnson is working through it at speed. • Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist