THERE aren’t all that many people out in everyday Scotland who will have heard of Stephen Noon. In the bubble of Scottish politics, though, he is a deeply significant figure. Along with a handful of other advisers, including Kevin Pringle, Geoff Aberdein, Colin McAllister and Liz Lloyd, as well as another handful of elected politicians, Stephen is responsible for the astonishing rise of the SNP, from also-rans at the outset of devolution, to unassailable dominance today.

I know all of these people; some very well, and others less so. I know Stephen. And I know the depth of thought that will have gone into the words he has written and spoken over the last week.

There are two important sides to his intervention. There is Stephen the strategist – the best of his generation – who sees the long-term prospects of nationalism being best served by an evolution to a destination short of full independence. But, much more importantly, there is Stephen the man, the Scotsman, who, after a time away, has returned to a country more polarised, more antagonistic, more cemented than at any other time this century. The man who wants his country to heal and to grow as a single team, rather than as two tribes living in one land.

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Stephen’s intervention is timely, and those on the nationalist and unionist side would both be wise to consider its content and its implications. Scotland is struggling. We face an unprecedented cost of living crisis which is bound to last until at least next spring. As the Fiscal Commission showed earlier this week, we face a demographic squeeze throughout the remainder of this century, with a falling population, fewer working-age people and more older people dependent on state-funded financial, health and social care. Our provision of public services and our underlying economy is ill-equipped to cope with it, let alone to prosper through it.

Yet we do not discuss these meaningful issues in meaningful detail. Instead, each side focuses on Scotland’s constitutional circumstances and declares that all will be well once they prevail. The trouble is, there is no sign of victory for either side.

The increase in pro-independence sentiment since the 2014 referendum has been weak. Almost all polls, eight years later, record a narrow pro-UK majority. Little progress has been made on the economic case for independence. In choppy waters, Scots are clinging to the biggest raft. As a result the SNP is in a holding pattern; every election now, whether at Holyrood or Westminster, is fought based on a minor tinker to the “send a message to Westminster” strategy.

Westminster isn’t listening. For better or worse (and my own views on the matter have appeared often on this page) the strategy of successive Tory governments back to Theresa May’s, through Boris Johnson’s and, as night follows day, into Liz Truss’s, will be “no, no, no”. This is not only an established policy of government, it is also a single-issue election strategy for the Scottish Tory Party. Vote for us, they say, and we will guarantee that there will be no referendum.

Ironic, isn’t it, that these two warring entities are utterly dependent on each other’s intransigence for their own electoral success?

Stephen is correctly identifying that, presuming the Supreme Court dismisses the Scottish Government’s case, there is no tangible prospect of a "legal" referendum with the approval of the UK Government. So we are stuck. The Scottish Government keeps asking, and the UK Governing keeps refusing.

Stephen is asking us all to break the cycle through a compromise position which lies somewhere in between the devolved status quo (which he characterises as five out of10 on the continuum of Scottish autonomy) and full independence outside the UK and outside the EU (which he calls a 10). He wants politicians, and people, to work together to decide what number, out of 10, we should settle upon, and sees the difference between, say, a seven and an eight as being too small to be worth yelling at each other over.

Getting there, though, is immeasurably harder in deed than it is in word. Two things would have to happen. The first is that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party would have to win the next General Election. Anyone who thinks the Tory Party is emotionally capable of changing course on the future of devolution is living in cloud cuckoo land. Devolving power is not in their DNA, and they are far more likely to fight it vociferously, before being dragged into it kicking and screaming, and then reverse-engineering support for it after they have been decimated, much like they did in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

No, it will be down to Labour, again. It will depend on Sir Keir accepting that the status quo is unsustainable and enthusiastically embracing something at seven or eight on Stephen Noon’s continuum.

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However, that is only half the battle and, in the final analysis, probably the easier half. For the other half involves Nicola Sturgeon, or any successor, leading her people back down from the top of the mountain to a new settled position beneath the clouds. This will be excruciatingly difficult; perhaps impossible. The SNP has often tinkered with its strategy but usually for the purpose of taking Scotland closer to independence rather than further away. This would be demonstrably different.

Sir Keir and Ms Sturgeon should both consider compromise, though, because it would represent the "gold standard" outcome for our politics and for our people. It would eliminate the prospect of another referendum which, let it be said, would be a bloodbath. And it would recognise that the status quo is a position which few would actively choose, and which has no long-term sustainability.

I have, personally, found it difficult not to be infected by Stephen Noon’s optimism. Surely everyone, like me, who operates outside of the frenzied activism of Scotland’s political and constitutional debate, would be attracted by the sort of country he wants us to live in.

Infected by his optimism but, alas, not yet sharing it. I find myself scarred by what I have seen since 2014; scarred by the public unreasonableness of people whom I know to be eminently reasonable people in private. I fear that the protagonists on either side would have too far to travel to make this fundamental shift realistic.

I deeply, sincerely hope that I am wrong.

Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters and Zero Matters

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