'No True Scotsman' really is a fallacy that runs through a lot of Scottish political analysis just now. The 700k who vote Tory, the million who voted for Brexit, they just get airbrushed out so that a simple picture of "Westminster imposing its will" can be painted uninterrupted.

And the flip side of that is that the true level of support for the SNP - which was around 44% in the last Scottish election and 45% (of Scottish votes) in the last UK election - gets painted as an overwhelming majority. I guess it's the old 'repeat a lie often enough' theory.

And of course there's also the repeated assertion of the death of Scottish Labour. My party is certainly in crisis but, even in its catastrophic 4th place result last December, half a million Scots chose to vote for it. They too are airbrushed out by some who should know better.

Add in the quarter of a million Scottish Lib Dem voters in the last UK election and you can see why all the airbrushing is necessary. When you add up the three main unionist parties' votes they make up 53% of the overall Scottish vote. Suddenly Scotland isn't the SNP at all.

And this is important not just because the truth is important in and of itself. It's important because people respond politically to their political perceptions. If they perceive the SNP as being widely supported they may not think it worthwhile expressing their own disagreement.

And if they perceive opposing parties as being so lacking in support that they can't possibly take on the SNP anyway then they are more likely not to bother to vote at all. And that is what the SNP will be relying upon next year. That's why these distortions are being promoted.

So the next time someone - whether they be a Scottish nationalist or a popular London-based left-wing commentator whose knowledge of Scotland comes largely from SNP PR - says "Scotland" when they mean the minority of Scots who support the SNP, please correct them. It's important.