Are pro-indy parties still speaking for those who want it?

As he conceded defeat in the indyref in the early hours of September 18, 2014 the First Minister Alex Salmond famously remarked: “the dream shall never die”.

While the issue to which he has dedicated his political life appears to be off the table for the immediate future, in some ways he was right.

A YouGov poll on the 10th anniversary of the referendum found the margins were around the same as a decade ago, with 44% saying they would vote Yes to Scotland leaving the United Kingdom.

However, 8% said they didn’t know how they would vote in a hypothetical future poll and 21% of no voters said their opinion was ‘not strong’. Young voters who have entered the electorate since the indyref favour Yes by 39% to 31% (as do 25-49-year-olds by 42% to 37%), and 56% said they would support independence if it meant rejoining the European Union.

Why, then, does it feel that independence is as far away as it’s been since the referendum was announced back in March 2013?

One obvious explanation is how closely the Yes movement, both before and after the vote, was tied to the SNP, which after dominating the Scottish political scene since the ballot appears to be, if not on its last legs, then on the ropes.

The party, which has independence as its raison d’être, was always likely to lead the charge but 10 years on it’s striking that there really is not a wider movement to speak of, certainly at a parliamentary level.

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The Scottish Greens and the SNP are in the huff with each other after the messy Bute House divorce, Alba bear a longstanding grudge against the Nicola Sturgeon wing of Mr Salmond’s former party and the former First Minister and Patrick Harvie have never seen eye-to-eye.

Two of those parties exist for the purpose of securing independence, while the Scottish Greens have achieved heretofore unseen electoral relevance since backing Yes, even if their mission statement would have the environment as the top line. Yet despite support for independence being as strong as ever, it’s all a bit People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front.

There are no doubt some who would argue that the solution is for all to unite behind one party – probably the SNP – but having a range of voices across the independence movement is important and, thanks to the electoral system at Holyrood, such an approach makes no sense anyway.

For years party leadership pushed a ‘both votes SNP’ strategy for Scottish elections despite the fact they were guaranteed to dominate in the constituency vote. The Additional Member System gives preference to parties which haven’t won any constituency seats meaning that in 2021, having won 62 of them, the SNP got just two on the list despite taking 40% of the vote. Almost everyone who voted for the party on the list wasted their vote.

Alba have made noises about being unified for independence, but that rings rather hollow when Mr Salmond is branding Mr Harvie a “total idiot” in the next breath. Are these really the actions of a party putting independence before ego?

Of course, the Scottish Greens might argue that they couldn’t possibly align themselves with Alba and their positions on a number of social issues – and vice-versa – while John Swinney and Kate Forbes are focused on bailing water out of their sinking ship, but if independence is as important as they all claim it is, why can’t it be done?

To defeat the far-right in this year’s French legislative elections, parties ranging from centre-left through Green to the Communist Party united under one banner as the New Popular Front and emerged as the biggest party (only to be locked out of power by Emmanuel Macron doing a deal with the far-right anyway).

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In Hungary an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to curb the power of Viktor Orbán saw the United for Hungary coalition comprise the right-wing Jobbik party, the Hungarian Socialist Party and the Greens. Sadly the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party opted not to join: its policy of a Magyar restaurant on Mars may well have swung things.

In Italy coalitions of the right and left frequently face off at the ballot box, while following the 1992 Czechoslovak election a coalition between Vladimir Mečiar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, the Democratic Left Party and the Slovak National Party on one side; and the Civic Democratic Party and Christian Democratic Party on the other brought about the Velvet Divorce.

Opponents of independence are often accused of viewing Scotland as “too wee, too poor, too stupid” to achieve independence. Perhaps its supposed proponents could try not being too small, too petty, too bitter to speak effectively for those who still want it.