We’re just over two weeks into the election campaign, with a third of the campaigning done, and it looks even more likely now that Labour will pull off a massive victory than it did when the election was called. It also seems increasingly likely that Labour will win big in Scotland, with the most pessimistic polling for the SNP suggesting it could win as few as seven seats and that one of the casualties could be its Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn.

I doubt that we’ll be looking at that catastrophic a scenario for the SNP come election night, but even the average of the Scottish polls that have come out during the campaign suggests a heavy defeat, with the SNP winning 12 seats (down from 48 in 2019) to Labour’s 35, on a Labour lead of six points. Even more optimistic estimates, like those produced by pollsters using "multiple regression and post-stratification" (known as MRP), have the SNP losing a substantial number of seats and failing to win a majority north of the Border. So, we must ask what secessionist politics in Scotland will look like with a newly-vulnerable SNP and a Labour government in London.

Firstly, come the 2026 Scottish Parliament election, two of the key dynamics of this campaign which benefit the Labour Party will no longer be relevant. Pro-independence voters will not be faced with ejecting a Conservative government from office, but a nationalist and pro-independence one, nor will they be able to protest vote against the SNP in Labour-SNP contests without signing up for a Labour government in Edinburgh.

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We will likely return to a form of the kind of split Labour-SNP voting that we saw before the 2014 independence referendum. Between Westminster and Holyrood elections, support would swing from Labour to the SNP and back. Between 1997 and 2005, around 6% of voters swung between Labour and the SNP at successive Westminster and Holyrood elections, supporting Labour at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood. That pattern became even more pronounced after 2005. More than 11% of voters swung from Labour to the SNP in 2007, and back to Labour in 2010, before 18% of voters swung from Labour to the SNP in 2011.

If we do return to a similar pattern, it will probably be more muted than those big swings between 2007 and 2011 -  not least of all because of the SNP’s record in government. But it will mean that the SNP’s defeat in this General Election is followed by something of a recovery ahead of the 2026 elections.

Secondly, regardless of how much Scotland’s non-secessionist parties and commentators might like it to, the constitutional question is not going away. As support has drained away from the SNP to Labour, support for Scottish independence has not fallen. The first noticeable drop in SNP support, and concurrent increase in Labour support, came following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation and the SNP’s bloodletting of a leadership contest. Support for independence stood at 43% on the eve of Ms Sturgeon’s resignation. In the polls conducted since the election was called, that support stands at 44%.

The Scottish political landscape was changed irrevocably by the 2014 independence referendum. Any analysis of what comes next must acknowledge that, as to do otherwise is to pretend that we are on the verge of returning to a pre-2014 world – resetting to a politics in which the constitution is not an issue. But the past decade happened and will not be leaving us any time soon.

The reasons for the decline in the role of independence as a driver of voting behaviour are clear: the lack of progress made in the past decade towards that goal, and the desire for change regardless of whether it is through independence or not. But what happens when we reach the point at which Scots want a change from a Labour government that has become saddled with its own baggage? It is sometimes difficult to see how we would reach that point from where we are, with Labour riding high, but whether it comes two, five, or 10 years from now, it is as close to inevitable as anything is in politics that the incoming Labour government will eventually be an outgoing Labour government. At that point, the only alternative within the UK will be a government further to the right and less aligned with the priorities of Scottish voters.

In the near term, the opportunity structure for Scottish secessionists is as closed as it could be. There are no routes to independence in the coming years. But in the medium to long term, there will be moments of opportunity that Scottish secessionists will be able to take advantage of. The most obvious will be moments of heightened discontent with government at Westminster, but other, less obvious opportunities may well arise.

There is likely to be continued swings between Labour and the SNP at HolyroodThere is likely to be continued swings between Labour and the SNP at Holyrood (Image: PA)

And the SNP should be able to expect to continue with a substantial base of support, particularly at Scottish Parliament elections, and a large pool of potential supporters to compete for. For that reason, Scottish nationalism and secessionism will continue to be at the heart of our politics, if not always in government.

The question the SNP and other secessionists face, then, is how to use this time to prepare for the moments of opportunity that will come further down the line. The clearest weakness of Scottish secessionism is that it lacks a critical mass of support among the population, large enough to force Westminster to acknowledge that support. Some secessionists see that critical mass as the inevitable consequence of young Scots’ overwhelming support for independence. But it would be foolish of them to assume that support will hold as those voters age - they will have to pro-actively build support for secession.

The key challenge for the independence movement in the aftermath of this election will be to strategise to build support for secession under a Labour government. What will this Labour government look like? What weaknesses might it have? How could its failures be pivoted to arguments for secession? And who is best placed to make those arguments – the SNP, focused as it will be on retaining power, or some other campaigning group?

The future of the Scottish independence movement is uncertain, but it does have a future. How bright that future is, is up to the secessionists themselves.