Lord Frost is tipped to head up the Cabinet Office under Liz Truss, making him the Prime Minister’s point man on the constitution. Is he the right man for the job? It’s hard to tell. He was willing to say what others wouldn’t about the Northern Ireland Protocol and the government has been nowhere on that matter since he left. He recently penned a piece on the looming constitutional crisis in Scotland, making him perhaps the only senior Westminster figure aware there is a looming constitutional crisis in Scotland.

On the other hand, Unionists have been burned before. I remember one chump who heralded Michael Gove as the man to secure the Union. Gove, a political operator of undoubted (and underused) talents, ultimately followed the well-trodden path of Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Which is to say: meeting the Scottish government half-way so it could more easily stick two fingers up in Westminster’s face.

However, Frost does have something else going for him. The Scottish edition of the Sunday Times carried a story this weekend that began: ‘Senior Scottish Tories are concerned that Liz Truss could undermine the Union if, as prime minister, she hands a senior cabinet post to Lord Frost.’ It seems the former minister has ‘raised eyebrows among Scottish colleagues in recent weeks with what some fear smacks of a more “macho” unionism that is not sufficiently respectful of other opinion north of the border’.

Senior Scottish Tories are concerned? Senior Scottish Tories are concerned by a glimpse of their own shadow. They have spent eight years elevating ‘now is not the time’ to a constitutional convention. What is needed in Downing Street is someone to embed a Unionist philosophy, an intellectual framework that begins not from the position that independence is something to be delayed but from the position that the United Kingdom ought to endure. If that is what Frost would do — and I have no idea if he would — it would be a welcome development.

As for his having ‘raised eyebrows among Scottish Tories’, it’ll be the heaviest lifting some of them have done since they got to Holyrood. Terms like ‘macho’ or ‘muscular’ unionism are used by opponents of Unionism who wish to frame the constitutional debate as independence versus limitless devolution and the ever-weakening Union it fosters. But there is an alternative to nationalism and diet nationalism: devolution reform.

I have sketched out previously the different forms it could take, from clarifying legislation to a new Act of Union, but devolution reform should begin from these principles:

1) The United Kingdom should continue to exist as currently constituted.

2) In the UK, sovereignty resides exclusively at Westminster, or ‘the crown-in-parliament under God’.

3) The devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales operate within a framework defined by principles 1) and 2) and should be forbidden, by statute if necessary, from any actions contrary to these principles.

Devolution in Scotland has strayed from its original purpose of subsidiarity and has been turned into a vehicle for achieving secession. This entitles the Tories to reframe it on their own terms, as a mere administrative policy to make government more efficient and responsive. Not a constitutional equal to Westminster or a rival source of political legitimacy but a subordinate body much more limited in legislative and executive scope.

Whitehall must disentangle itself from the jaws of various mental and strategic traps. No, there is no silver bullet package of additional powers that will sate the SNP’s appetite for secession. Every fresh power devolved weakens the Union and reduces the journey to independence from a leap in the dark to a mere step. No, it is not undemocratic to refuse another referendum. More than 80 per cent of countries around the world either prohibit or inhibit secession. No, ministers need not wait to let the Supreme court decide what the Scotland Act says. It can amend the legislation whenever it wants to reserve all referendums to Westminster. (I would reserve more than that.)

A few other points. When ministers visit Scotland, they should do more than photo ops with whisky bottles and giant fish. They are not dignitaries visiting a foreign land. Scotland is their country and they are its government. Government in all its aspects must stop deferring to the Scottish government and the devocrats. It must stop speaking and acting as though Scotland is separate to the rest of the UK or a place where Westminster’s authority is limited. In everything ministers say and do in relation to Scotland, they should first imagine saying or doing the same thing in relation to Yorkshire. If it doesn’t sound right, there’s something wrong with it. While they’re at it, they might want to do something about the Scottish government openly developing its own foreign policy.

I have no particular insight into whether Frost is minded to do any of these things. His proposed ‘legally binding’ threshold for another referendum is ‘75 per cent of seats in the Scottish parliament in favour of independence, over a ten-year period’. In practice, it would mean a process that could end with the dismantling of the United Kingdom could be triggered by just two consecutive Holyrood elections. This not only buys into the nationalist position that Holyrood, not Westminster, should dictate the constitutional future of the UK, it gives separatists something to aim for.

Liz Truss needs to put someone in charge of constitutional policy who believes instinctively and intrinsically in the United Kingdom. Someone who understands Scottish political sensitivities (and those of Northern Ireland and Wales) but isn’t petrified by them. Someone who grasps that the current devolution settlements are flawed in ways injurious and potentially destructive to the UK and so must be reformed. If Lord Frost is the man for the job, great. If any Scottish Tories don’t approve, tough.