Wake up, Yes voters: the SNP is conning us over indy

Clearly, Westminster must take the lion’s share of blame for the mess we see in Scotland today, but that in no way lets the SNP off the hook. Governing is about choices. The SNP chose to govern like this.

Nobody in London, for instance, held a gun to SNP heads and told them to cut the affordable housing budget while 10,000 kids are homeless. The SNP did that perfectly fine without wicked Tories.

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However, the art of distraction has worn somewhat thin lately. Few buy the constant grievance any more. Most see it for what it is: a means of covering up sheer uselessness. Yet one ruse in the magic box remains: the illusion of independence.

As most readers know, I’m a moderate independence supporter. I don’t "do" nationalism or flags - detesting both the oafishness of false patriotism and exceptionalism, and the danger of a painted rag which blunts the minds of those who hold it in awe.

I favour independence as I consider Westminster an irredeemable disaster which prevents the attainment of the socially democratic society I’d like to see. If Westminster could be fixed, I wouldn’t really care about independence.

There are many like me, and we’ll be watching Keir Starmer very closely to see whether he’ll prove us right or wrong if he does as expected and wins the election.

But as a "soft Yesser", which I suppose pollsters might call me, I don’t believe one word any more that comes out of the SNP’s mouth about independence.

Incidentally, in case anyone is labouring under the misapprehension that my doubts make me susceptible to the cold embrace of Alex Salmond’s Alba, I promise that I’d rather vote for the lettuce which outlasted Liz Truss than that party.

A comment from Mhairi Black recently seemed to underscore my concerns. Speaking to the National newspaper, she was asked “whether the SNP was committed to [its independence strategy] and whether any discussions about it had taken place in the Westminster group”.

Black replied: “So me personally no, I’ve not heard any particular detail on that.”

Isn’t that odd? That the SNP’s outgoing deputy Westminster leader has heard nothing about the party’s strategy for its flagship policy? I found myself like Alice, muttering "curiouser and curiouser".

One would be forgiven for wondering if Black hasn’t heard details about the indy strategy because firstly, there’s no effective strategy to speak of; and secondly, the SNP now sees independence as a means not of securing Scotland’s constitutional future but of keeping itself merely in power.

It offends the word ‘strategy’ to apply it to the party’s independence policy. The SNP “believes” that if it “wins a majority” of seats at the General Election, the Scottish government would be “empowered to begin immediate negotiations” with London on independence.

Two points: the SNP ain’t gonna win a majority of seats. Polls show it getting hammered. So the first principle of the policy is fantasy. Additionally, even if it managed to pull off the impossible, Keir Starmer would tell the party to shove it. Why would a newly-elected Prime Minister risk his premiership to keep John Swinney happy?

The only way to get independence has and always will be to govern so well that support rises to 60% and stays there, making Westminster’s refusal of another referendum a democratic impossibility. The SNP has done nothing to make that happen.

Independence, the SNP says, is “line one” in its manifesto: front and centre. Forgive my cynicism, but I feel independence is front and centre for the SNP only in so much as it wants those inclined to Yes constantly thinking about it, in the hope that it lures us into voting for the party. It isn’t front and centre in any meaningful sense.

I mean, beyond empty words, what has the SNP really done to make independence happen? Despite the turgid government papers, the idea of what independence ‘means’ hasn’t changed substantively since 2014. And spoiler alert: Yes lost back then.

Mhairi Black (Image: PA)

So: has the SNP an intelligent independence prospectus? No. Have they sensible plans for indyref2? No. Will a referendum happen if we continue along this course? No.

So: does it all feel like a sham? Yes.

The SNP is a crumbling coalition. When the party was on the up, independence kept left and right, progressive and social conservative, broadly in one tent. Now the party is in decline, independence - or rather the illusion of independence - is all it has left.

To retain any chance of staving off humiliation at the election, the SNP must keep playing that indy card, telling Yessers such as myself that if we believe in independence then like Obi Wan in the Star Wars movies they’re our only hope.

But who puts hope in cynical illusions? I’m being asked to vote for a failed government because I believe in just one of that government’s positions. Yet it's a position which it's doing nothing to advance, and indeed it feels like a position which it'susing to befuddle the gullible.

Here’s a horrible truth for the Yes movement - that’s if the Yes movement even exists in a substantive way any more: perhaps the best hope for independence is that the SNP gets well and truly thrashed at this election.

That might create the opportunity for what must happen if the Yes movement is to regroup and survive: the decoupling of independence from the SNP. Independence should be a civic, not political movement.

It should sicken everyone who backs Yes that nearly half the country supports independence, yet its fortunes are shackled to a failed political party. Maybe once the illusionist is forced from the stage, the notion of independence can prosper in the glare of reality.