Scotland has a curious relationship with class. It is both everywhere and nowhere. Scotland’s classic comedies, for instance, are almost exclusively about working-class culture, but the popular interpretation is often that of the class divide and the national divide as ubiquitous – the Scottish as working-class. It is a phenomenon that can only satisfactorily be explained by Scotland’s place as a nation within a larger UK nation-state, a dynamic that blurs the lines of identity between class and nation.

This national-popular mythology has a profound influence on Scottish political culture. Take First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, from deindustrialised north Ayrshire on Scotland’s west coast. ‘Oor Nicola’ has been seen for years as a politician by and for the people, standing up to posh Etonian Prime Ministers that stand in her way. The fact she earns a salary that puts her firmly in the top 5 per cent of Scottish income earners and has been a professional politician for the vast majority of her adult life rarely cuts through the myth. This is not exclusive to Scottish nationalism. Long before the rise of the SNP, a series of Labour figures of Scots origin attained working-class hero status north of the border for a time, despite dubious claims to such a crown.

At certain moments, the reality of Scotland as a society deeply divided by class inequalities in its own right bursts through the caricature. One of those moments came on Sunday, when the Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood had to resign after being caught breaching the lockdown rules she herself had drawn-up, visiting a second home with her family on two consecutive weekends. Suddenly, latent class tensions have reared their head once again.

Cack-handed initial attempts by the Scottish government to justify Calderwood’s behaviour (she only “went to check” on the house…) badly miscalculated the mood. This was a classic case of ‘one rule for them, another for us’: the same person who was fronting-up government TV adverts demanding people “stay at home” and scolding people for trying to get as much as a sun-tan, was herself flouncing off to her plush second home on the Fife coast at weekends. Government’s can get away with many things, but self-entitled hypocrisy at a time of national crisis is not one of them.

Calderwood’s error was compounded by the fact that the issue of second homes touches on a raw nerve. As Darren McGarvey, author of the award-winning Poverty Safari (a book about class and Scotland which did cut through the national mythology), pointedly put it when the story broke: “People with two homes can travel between them if they get bored of walking around in their massive garden.” Never before have the advantages of being part of the asset-class been so obvious at the level of mental health and wellbeing.

Life under lockdown is mediated by brutal class hierarchies. Living in a tower black with windows that do not fully open and with no access to greenspace is a qualitatively different experience than riding out the crisis at a scenic coastal getaway. The Highlands, which has a uniquely high proportion of second homes, has seen a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases because many have taken the opportunity to get out of the city and head to their massively under-taxed second property, just like Calderwood. The added stress on the health service, which has to travel longer distances to care for the sick in rural Scotland, is significant.

The class divide does not begin and end with Calderwood, or with second homes. Social care is now under the spotlight after a care worker in West Dunbartonshire died from Coronavirus. Few care workers have had PPE in Scotland and even less have been tested, despite being at the frontline of this crisis. This mainly female, low-paid workforce has been largely left to fend for itself, putting themselves and those they care for in danger. As GMB Scotland organiser Hazel Nolan said: “An untold story of this crisis so far has been the inconvenient truth that the lower paid you are on the frontline of the key worker response, the less protection and resource you get.”

Care runs along class lines. In just seven days, 13 people died in Burlington Care home in Cranhill on the northeast of Glasgow, an area in the top 10 per cent most deprived in Scotland. The majority of people in care homes are supported by local authority funding, meaning they have assets of less than £26,500. The widespread and sudden cuts to homecare services in local authorities across Scotland has left working class families scrambling to support their elderly while trying to hold down jobs. Those with money can buy private care in.

And in workplaces across Scotland, profit is still being prioritised over public health. Scotch whisky is a case in point. Scotland’s wealthiest family are the owners of whisky giant William Grant & Sons, worth £2.8 billion. Its powerful lobbyist the Scotch Whisky Association has pressed the Scottish government to allow production to continue, despite it evidently not being “essential” production. A union poll of members in the whisky industry showed 93 per cent believe they should stop work immediately, but the Scottish government has sided with the Whisky lobby.

A source working on the factory floor at the drinks giant Diageo has said that on the first day of lockdown it took until half-way into the shift before any new safety measures were put forward by management. But while the rank-and-file have been forced to risk their health to keep producing bottles for thirsty customers in lockdown, only line managers have been seen at work for the past two weeks. Senior managers have all been at home, self-isolating.

The landlord-tenant class divide is another case in point. The Scottish government have suspended evictions for six months, but they have not stopped or reduced rent payments, meaning if rents are not paid now the threat of eviction can be hung over tenants heads in October. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government agreed a last-minute package with the Tories to support landlords, establishing interest-free loans just in case any tenants refuse to cough up in the next half-year.

Members of the Scottish Parliament stand clearly on one side of the landlord-tenant class division, with a quick look at the registers of interest showing that the political class is to a large extent a landlord class. Over the 21 year history of the Scottish Parliament, the private rental sector has tripled in size, with housing costs as a % of income rising from 24 per cent to 35 per cent for the poorest fifth, while falling from 2 per cent to 1 per cent for the richest fifth, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Scottish Parliament was supposed to herald an era of social justice in housing, but centre-left Labour and then SNP governments have actually overseen a regression, with the inheritance of housing wealth now a more important determinant of your life chances in Scotland than ever before.

A consistent class politics must fight for equality in all workplaces and within all nations. That’s a politics we needed before the coronavirus crisis. Now, it’s urgent.