Salmond v Sturgeon divide shows independence has lost its bloom, says Andrew Dunlop

It can be seen in purely personal terms. Salmond as the embodiment of Jeremy Paxman’s entertaining caricature of a politician in his early Noughties book, The Political Animal. Craving for attention, terrified of being ignored, drawing energy from the adulation of a crowd, flirting with danger, desperate to compensate for something missing in his life.

How else to explain the compulsive need to return for more punishment on the political frontline? A career delivering for sure some amazing highs, but also visiting on him a series of humiliating blows, which would crush most normal people.

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So when Nicola Sturgeon warns Scottish voters that the latest Salmond tilt is all about him, not them, she has a point.

Yet when Mr Salmond implies it’s all about her, and how she leads nationalism, he has a point too. The former First Minister’s move seeks to exploit worries of a deeper nationalist malaise.

Keen gardeners among you will understand when I say that independence is like a plant that has lost its bloom. Apparently still healthy on the outside but betraying the unmistakeable early signs of internal decay – a prelude to a gradual loss of allure.

Where’s the evidence, I hear you cry? Aren’t all the polls pointing in the right direction?

Well, yes and no. Certainly the headline figures of support for independence remain strong. However, hubristic SNP claims the polls demonstrate independence is now the settled will of the Scottish people are well wide off the mark. Dig a little deeper and it’s clear from the polls that holding another independence referendum any time soon is, for the vast majority of Scots recovering from the trauma of a pandemic, not a priority.

The SNP strategy seems to boil down to trying to create a sense among Scots – contrary to evidence and their own preferences – that independence is somehow inevitable. A hope that if you repeat a contestable assertion often enough people will start to believe it.

Scotland is caught in a continuous loop of seemingly never-ending political campaigning. Eight trips to the polls in ten years. And, if the SNP has its way, it will be Groundhog Day all over again in a year or so for Indyref2. This is the Chinese water torture path to independence, relentlessly wearing down into submission an exhausted population.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be. What happened to the much vaunted national conversations to build a groundswell of support sufficient for consistent poll numbers of over 60% support for independence? Or the promised joyous outbreak of ‘civic nationalism’ – whatever that is?

Instead we’ve the sight of the man who lost decisively the 2014 referendum trying to game the Scottish Parliament electoral system in a bid to force another. He claims that with barely more than a third of the regional votes he can deliver a ‘super-majority’ of two thirds of all the seats. If he succeeds it would be grotesque misrepresentation of the true state of current Scottish opinion on the constitutional question. Is that all it takes these days to end over 300 years of partnership and break up the world’s most successful multinational state?

Mr Salmond certainly thinks so. And why? Because he knows that his successor hasn’t done the work. Union supporters say rightly that Nicola Sturgeon is guilty of failing to improve public services because she’s too focussed on separation. Die-hard nationalists accuse her of not being focussed on it enough. One begins to wonder what she’s been up to all these years before Covid kicked in.

It’s a high risk strategy for Ms Sturgeon to double-down by directly putting independence on the ballot paper. Since 2014 the SNP has done hardly any fresh thinking to address previous and new doubts about the independence prospectus. For example, the party has more currency positions than a Pilates class. And they apparently see no contradiction in inveighing against a hard border with the EU, when the inevitable consequence of their own separation plans is a hard border with the UK.

So the SNP’s claims about wanting to improve the governance of Scotland – which are meant to sound principled and high-minded – ring hollow in light of what the Salmond affair reveals about how Scotland is governed today. Most of the serious thinking about how to improve governance on these islands is taking place on the Union side.

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And is Nicola Sturgeon the best person to lead Scotland’s recovery from Covid when she thinks the job will be done by this time next year? Really? Particularly when the Scottish Government’s new motto seems to be “Delivery Promised is Delivery Delayed”.

The emotional attraction of independence for many undecided Scots is understandable. Scotland is a proud nation. The desire for Scotland to be the best it can possibly be is a noble cause all Scots share. But can anyone honestly say that the events of the last few years have burnished the lustre of independence?

Covid is an awful shared experience. A national crisis reminding us of the innate generosity of spirit, which exists in every part of our country. Common values demonstrating when the chips are down, we pull together.

The SNP may want to put independence on the ballot paper. There will be something else on the ballot paper too – what values the people of Scotland want to represent them in the years ahead. The values of a creed that wants to pull us apart, families divided by a hard border. Or the values of a cause dedicated to continuing to work together – families united – as friends and neighbours. It’s time to decide.

Andrew Dunlop was an adviser to former Conservative prime minister David Cameron during the 2014 independence referendum

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