Scottish independence and the need to find routes beyond the SNP

That figure had reached 84,000 by the time Nicola Sturgeon became the party’s leader and passed 100,000 before the 2015 general election – at which many of the SNP’s new MPs had been independence campaigners who began that campaign outwith the SNP. In essence, the SNP rapidly absorbed the Yes movement. The movement had become the party.

READ MORE: SNP versus Scottish Labour: Yousaf could still come out on top

While that movement and its support among the public was too small to win the referendum, it was comfortably large enough to secure the past decade of SNP hegemony in Scottish politics. Facing a divided opposition, it delivered a succession of stunning election victories for the SNP, including the largest share of the popular vote in a general election in Scotland since 1955, record constituency vote shares in the 2016 and 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, and a record share of first preference votes in the 2022 local elections.

In doing so, it kept independence on the political agenda long after the referendum and injected new energy into the independence campaign after the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union.

But despite the SNP’s electoral success in the past decade, the cause of independence has not advanced and looks unlikely to do so in the coming years regardless of the SNP’s focus on the issue and myriad policy papers.

This was the great risk posed by the consolidation of the independence movement in the form of a rapidly expanded SNP. Yes, it virtually guaranteed control of the Scottish Government and kept the constitutional debate at the heart of Scottish politics – for a time – but tying the cause of independence to the fate of one party under the leadership of one politician was likely to end badly.

I don’t make a habit of quoting Enoch Powell, but he was right that “all political lives […] end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” Likewise, the cyclical nature of democratic politics, the tax on popularity inevitably paid by all governing parties, and the basic reality of political entropy guarantees that all governments end in failure, too.

The SNP 'can't deliver independence on its own' (Image: free)

But even when the SNP was hegemonic it struggled to balance the competing and contradictory demands of government and secessionism, of winning elections to democratic office and of establishing support for a dramatic and radical break with the governing arrangements that have prevailed in Scotland for three centuries.

Scotland is, fundamentally, a small ‘c’ conservative country with a radical self-image. Undeniably, it has a penchant for bursts of political radicalism, but on a day-to-day basis, its electorate prefers incrementalism. Governing such a society, and consistently winning elections with such an electorate, does not sit well with a secessionist project.

This points to a third problem the independence movement has faced since 2014 – its complete lack of tactical innovation and diversity. The movement, concentrated as it is in the SNP, has been dependent on electoral politics to advance its cause. Not only is this limiting for the reasons I’ve pointed to, but it is also highly unusual for any social movement, let alone a secessionist movement, to limit itself strictly to the avenues of ‘normal’ politics.

There are hundreds of political tactics open to social movements, including secessionists, from protests and marches to boycotts and civil disobedience. Most successful secessionist movements have had to take advantage of a range of these, persistently over long periods, before coming close to achieving their goals. With rare exceptions, Scottish secessionists have failed to avail themselves of any tactics beyond the electoral.

This is a problem that goes beyond the independence movement’s dependence on the SNP to advance its cause. The alternatives to the SNP for those members and supporters leaving the party are dominated by other political parties, many of which come with their own baggage, whether that is the very left-wing ideological commitments of the Scottish Greens, which many (particularly older) independence supporters oppose, or the unpopular leadership of the Alba Party.

Instead, many independence activists and supporters have gone quiet. The movement is, for all intents and purposes, in hibernation.

Yet the same wheels of politics that propelled Scottish secessionism to political dominance after the 2014 referendum, and that currently turn against them, guarantee too that there will be opportunities for the independence movement in the future.

In the wake of significant changes in the political landscape, we often speak of ‘political earthquakes’, as if a landscape of stone has been suddenly torn up and reshaped. But the political landscape is far more akin to a dune field, defined by the peaks and troughs of ever-shifting dunes composed of individual grains of sand. Always changing, though that change may only become clear in time.

In that ever-changing landscape, opportunities will emerge for the independence movement to remobilise. If supporters of independence want to be placed to take advantage and achieve more than winning elections, they will have to use this time to build new, extra-parliamentary campaign groups and pull their movement’s centre of gravity away from the SNP.

READ MORE: Bloated BBC should have to pay its own way

This doesn’t mean completely abandoning electoral politics. The Scottish Parliament will be crucial to bringing independence about – if it ever does come about. But electoral politics will not be sufficient in its own right to achieve independence.

The absorption of the broader independence movement and its campaigning groups into the SNP may have delivered a decade of secessionist electoral dominance, but a lost decade for the cause of Scottish independence itself.

So, while it is not for me to tell the supporters of independence how to reform their movement, I do have a suggestion: let go of the past decade, rethink how you organise and campaign, learn lessons from successful political movements around the world, and let a hundred campaign groups bloom.