For everything there is a season, as Ecclesiastes says. A time to be born and a time to die.
When it comes to the current version of the Yes movement, it’s now time to die. This iteration, this incarnation, of the independence campaign is over. The leadership of the SNP, of Nicola Sturgeon, has failed the movement. That doesn’t mean the campaign is over, it just means the campaign needs rethought and the movement must regroup.
Of course, this will be met with shrieks of wrath from those blindly loyal to Sturgeon’s SNP. Yet for anyone with half a brain, who wants to see Scotland independent, continuing as matters stand is the definition of insanity.
The writing is on the wall wherever you look. Even Sturgeon’s ultra-loyal amanuensis in London, Ian Blackford, has got out while the going is good. The SNP - and the wider Yes movement - isn’t a happy or united ship.
Two stalwarts of the independence campaign - Jim Sillars and Andy Wightman - have called time on the current shape, plan, tactics, and strategy of the Yes movement. Thank heavens. Someone of substance needed to say the obvious, in the face of ovine groupthink.
Sillars, former SNP depute leader, says the cart has been put before the horse. Sturgeon should have built “rock solid majority support for independence to a level no Westminster government could ignore” before seeking a referendum. He’s unquestionably right.
Scathingly - accurately - he warns activists to quit thinking of the First Minister as “Wonder Woman”. Sturgeon is a helluva political operator, but she doesn’t possess papal infallibility. “Our aim,” says Sillars, “should be to reach between 55 and 60 per cent” support for independence. Quit the grievance and the victimhood too, he warns. For thinking Yessers, it’s manna from heaven.
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