Independence Referendum One Year On: Sturgeon looks determinedly forward to the day Scotland will become independent

What was your mood on day one, at the launch for Yes Scotland in 2012? She shakes her head as if she’s being asked to remember a dusty trigonometry lesson.

“That was a long time ago,” she whistles. “It seems like another lifetime, because of the distance we travelled. Excitement probably was the predominant feeling, but also a sense of, ‘This is for real now.’ We always felt as if we had a massive mountain to climb.

“I guess that’s one of the things I’m proudest of. I don’t mean to underplay the disappointment of the result, but the Yes campaign did take support for independence from 30 per cent or thereabouts to 45 per cent. And given all that was thrown at the campaign, that’s no mean feat. I wish we’d managed to just get it a little bit further along the road.”

What about the No campaign? Did they help by making a hash of things?

“Describing themselves as Project Fear early on was probably the moment they became defined by their own negativity. A massive own goal. That was a punch-the-air moment.

“And the George Osborne ‘You’re not using the pound’ moment was one of those when I thought, ‘That’s a massive mistake for them.’ And it was. Now they might look back and say, ‘We won the referendum.’ But I still think that was a completely wrong thing to do.

“The number of people who volunteered over the next few days, ‘You know what, I’m going to vote Yes now because I’m not going to be told by these Bs what we can and can’t do'.

“Their whole tone - the whole dismal, depressing, ye-cannae-do-it campaign was wrong and from their point of view a mistake. That’s played a large part in the fact they have not won what happened after the referendum.”

Sturgeon was a Yes Scotland board member. Were the Greens and Scottish Socialists, who disagreed with sharing the pound and other SNP policies, always a boon to Yes Scotland?

“I’m not saying there weren’t moments of difficulty and tension,” she says with diplomatic understatement. “But overall the diversity of the Yes campaign was its biggest strength. It meant it could reach out beyond where the SNP on its own could ever have reached.

“I as a politician, and we in the SNP, were used to running campaigns designed, devised and implemented just by the SNP, so that was a challenge. To be fair to the Greens and the SSP they were also quite patient with us coming to terms with a different campaign.”

Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars is advocating overhauling the Yes platform next time, particularly on currency. How do you feel now about the SNP's plan to share the pound?

“The currency issue was difficult, there’s no getting away from that,” she says. “None of this is meant as a criticism of what Jim is saying, but I think those who say currency was difficult, so therefore we should just have had an alternative position and it would all have been very easy, are kidding themselves on. Whatever position we’d taken on currency would have been very difficult. I don’t think there was an easy position on currency to put forward.”

Isn’t the point that your position was shaky? Alex Salmond said at one point he had five Plan Bs. When people heard that they wondered what was wrong with Plan A, didn’t they?

“We had confidence in our Plan A.”

But your Plan A depended on the cooperation of another - uncooperative - sovereign state.

“It depended on the cooperation of another state who, I still believe, would have agreed with a common currency because it would have been in the self-interest of the rest of the UK.

“I question the position that if only we’d had a different position on currency, that argument would have been easy and we’d have gone on to win the referendum. I don’t think it would have been that simple.

"If we’d gone into the referendum, for argument’s sake, saying we’d have a separate Scottish currency, we would have got the full might of the opposition poured down on a separate currency.

"I don’t think there was an easy argument to argue. I think we argued the right one in terms of what was in the interests of Scotland.”

Agreed, the UK would have poured all sorts of scorn on it, but they couldn’t have taken their ball away. If it was a separate currency they wouldn’t have been able to block it, no?

“It would just have been a different set of arguments. I don’t accept that currency was what lost the referendum. I think for a number of people it was an inability to get over in their heads the sense of uncertainty. Currency would have been a part of that but I don’t think it was, in and of itself, the issue. That was my view then. It’s still my view now.”

Was the Yes side’s relentless glee club tone also a factor? Too much sunshine and lollipops, and too little cold hard fact, some would say. Do you accept that criticism?

“I think there is a point of view there, yes, that we would be wrong not to reflect on. But the Yes campaign grew its support through the campaign. The No campaign shed support. So notwithstanding we didn’t win, it’s hard to say we were on the wrong track. We were on the right track in the Yes campaign. We just didn’t get far enough fast enough to win.”

What about next time? You can’t rely on the No side making the same mistakes, so what would you do differently if there’s another referendum?

“We would have to find additional and more effective ways of getting over the uncertainty issues. There is no getting away from that. I’m not sure that’s as easy as changing our position on currency, or one particular approach. It’s more complicated, more nuanced. It’s partly about raising the confidence of Scotland. This is anecdotal, based on my own impressions, but I think we had a majority for Yes. If we’d asked people just to vote for what was in their hearts we’d have won a majority. Where we lost was in the head. That’s where we’ve got to do more and do better at convincing people.”

Alex Salmond said last year he’d be “absolutely delighted” with a 50.1 per cent Yes vote, even though that would imply a country split down the middle - hardly a stable result, and nothing like the 74 per cent for devolution in 1997. What kind of win would you want?

“If we ever do this again I would hope that we would see a decisive victory for Yes. If there is to be independence, as I hope there will be, and we’re to have a Yes vote, I want that to be emphatic not narrow. Because that will be better in terms of the transition to independence.

“I’ve a feeling that when Scotland does become independent, it will be because the confidence of the country has grown to such an extent that it will be a decisive result.”

So instead of last year’s plan, which was to build the Yes vote until it peaked on September 18, you’d rather it was the demonstrable settled will of the Scottish people?

“Of course. I would like to get to a position where the polls suggest that has become the case.”

What’s your latest thinking on the timing of another referendum?

“Our manifesto will set out what we think around the circumstances in which, and the possible timescales in which, a second referendum might be appropriate," she reveals.

"It will then be down to people to accept whether they vote for that manifesto.”

So it will definitely be talking about a second referendum?

“People would expect our manifesto to have something to say about it, in one direction or another. I’ve not finalised my view on this. But our manifesto will cover the issue of a second referendum. And people, as they vote in the election next year, will know what our position is and our view on the circumstances in which a second referendum might be appropriate.”

Far from brooding on the past, Sturgeon clearly has her eyes trained firmly on the future.