ONCE upon a time there were two pals. Both committed to a cause, their souls seared by the vision splendid.

When they spoke, you felt the air electrify: Jimmy Reid from the Clyde shipyards and Neil Kinnock from the mining valleys of South Wales. Platform speakers who elevated the weaving of dreams, through words, to high art. Art not artifice.

This week I brought both pals together again. In print.

Neil Kinnock wrote a foreword to my manuscript of conversations with Jimmy. Reading the pages in one night he told me, “You’ve brought him back to me.” Neil’s words, about his old pal, are forensic, poetic and profound.

Elated by this honour, I soon found a cloud in the silver lining. The last foreword Neil wrote was for the recently deceased Mikhail Gorbachev. Am I next for cashing in my chips?

Another cloud assails me. The unedifying circus show, from the Palace of Westminster, exposes politicos, like Bojo and ‘MissTrust,’ as players of power games. To them, integrity appears as distant as the dissolution of the monasteries. They possess all the qualities of a poker, without the occasional warmth.

The result? Public confidence in leaders is so low, it’s practically subterranean.

Autodidacts, like Jimmy and Neil, wrung oratorical flourishes from their ideology and commitment to social justice. Their views diverged, of course, and Jimmy is now the patron saint of the Yes movement. To me, Jimmy offers the most persuasive argument for independence.

During the 1992 election, I was a cub reporter for a now-defunct city newspaper. In Glasgow Central Station, Screamin’ Lord Sutch was buying me my first pint, when Neil and Glenys disembarked to a battery of cameras. They were met by the band, Jeannie Maxwell and the Jazzwegians. Unaccountably Jeannie wore a black top hat and purple sash, like the chief mourner in a New Orleans funeral procession.

Then, something happened that would be impossible today. Neil, and his wife Glenys, began jiving on the platform. An act of joyous spontaneity that eschewed stage management. Veteran journalists were disarmed by this formidably intelligent duo, who spoke of a new dawn for Scotland. Crowds surged to greet them, while southern England got excited over nothing. Or John Major, which is the same as nothing.

Danny Coffey, SNP Provost of Kilmarnock and Loudon, possessed the same warmth and intelligence. He held deep concern for people, using language to galvanise and inspire. It helped that he was a stalwart of Kilmarnock Burns Club. His early death, in 2006, robbed Scotland of a public servant of great humanity.

I once quoted philosopher William Sinclair to him, “It is better to be within one Scots mile of where you were heading than the exact spot of anyplace else.”

“Sinclair was from Kilmarnock?” asked Danny.

“Renfrewshire.” I replied.

“Ach, well. No one’s perfect,” was Danny’s riposte.

In politics, as in life, cynicism is more durable than sentimentality. Oh, but to glimpse again that vision splendid, shared by politicians with poetry in their souls.

Brian McGeachan is an author and playwright