Boris Johnson’s pledge to “heal divisions” following last week’s general election has occupied many of the columnists.

How will he do so? What will he deliver for his new-found blue collar supporters? What about the political chasm which has opened up between Carlisle and Gretna?

Mr Johnson himself remains something of an enigma - having avoided the biggest interviewers and eschewed a genuine programme in favour of a pithy slogan. Which Boris Johnson will we get? ponders Tim Bale in The Observer. The first possibility, he says “is that when it comes to Johnson and his principles there is , to borrow from Gertrude Stein, simply no ‘there’ there. According to this take the prime minister is no more and no less than an amalgam of ambition and ego.”

But Bale concludes that the Prime Minister is no more than a “bog standard British right winger,” who appreciates intuitively how to appeal to British voters and their sense of their country. As a result, he does not think Mr Johnson is sincere. “Each and every one of the prime minister’s predecessors, remember, made similarly heartwarming speeches on the steps of No 10 about healing a divided country, only to walk through its shiny black door and proceed to do pretty much the opposite.”

Elsewhere there is even less sign of rifts healing. A mind-boggling take comes from Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday, who argues the ‘Tory’ victory is nothing of the sort. “Mr Johnson’s mind is not conservative. He’s a North London bohemian, a social liberal who can barely understand the arguments for lifelong marriage. He is rich enough to have no idea how bad and how crammed with indoctrination, state schools actually are.”

Continuing in this vein for some time Mr Hitchens is scornful of the any notion of one-nation Conservatism. Alistair Campbell , he bizarrely claims “has engineered a reverse takeover of the Tories by New Labour.” Brexit won’t answer the prayers of leavers, resulting mainly in technical changes to trade policy. “Those who hoped to get their country back will be left staring around them and seeing the same old mess.”

So have the fearmongers got it all wrong about Mr Johnson? Is he a liberal lefty in disguise? Not for John Niven in the Sunday Mail, whose bilious ire is directed at voters in former Labour seats who have thrown their lot in with the Conservatives.

“The Tories have now become the party of the north of England, of working class people. It’s like Bernard Matthews is leading the Turkey Party and the turkeys are liking up to vote for him,” he says.

Any suggestion that people might vote to protect those with least in society, or the most vulnerable, is gone, his diatribe continues. “Under Thatcherism we moved into a phase where people openly and selfishly voted for their own best interests. Now, today, we enter a strange new world where people, in their droves, are actively voting against their own best interests.”

What is there to say? Niven ponders. “Well, enjoy your chlorinated chicken. Enjoy the maggots in your food. Enjoy paying 200 quid for an Epipen or a thousand quid for your insulin. I’m moving to Norway.”

So thank heavens for Dani Garavelli in the Scotland on Sunday, one of the few columnists who seems to have considered what healing our differences might really entail.

While not seeing the Conservative landslide as anything but a catastrophe, she urges Scots to “hold yourself with dignity and try to think positively,” even suggesting we count our blessings. “Unlike your English peers you have a stable centre-left party you felt OK about putting your X beside, and a potential escape route.” In Nicola Sturgeon, she says, Scotland has “a first minister whose unerring instinct for the right words is an antidote to all Johnson’s wrong ones and Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to find any words at all.”

In this fractious context, compassion can be a revolutionary act, she argues. Anger with English voters is misplaced: “It’s rich to criticise other people for being wary of a party Scottish voters long ago abandoned.”

Alasdair Gray’s exhortation to ‘work as if you live inn the early days of a better nation’ has never felt so relevant, Garavelli suggests. Yes, our neighbour has chosen to embrace the worst of British values. “Play our cards right and we could shrug it off like a snake’s wizened skin, while extending a welcome to those who would rather not be left behind.”

In time, that is. “What shall we do while we are waiting? Speak up; be kind; watch out for one another. And refuse to surrender to despair.”