In the wake of their defeat at the hands of Labour earlier this month many parts of the SNP turned to internal recriminations and blame games. Those involved were, rightly in my view, derided by their colleagues in public and, more often, in private. Parties do not win back the voters' trust by turning on themselves. They do so by understanding why they lost and responding to voters’ concerns.

To their credit, most in the SNP have taken that latter approach, at least publicly, pointing out the weaknesses in the SNP’s record and offering to voters, with a particular focus on the constitutional question.

The SNP’s focus on independence went from being the cornerstone of their electoral coalition to a drag on their ability to win voters focused on other issues. Much of the early thinking on how the SNP adapt to this has suggested that they find a way to talk around the issue, rather than focusing on it. That may be wise, but where would this leave the independence cause itself?

During Alex Salmond’s second tenure as SNP leader, they focused on building support for independence by creating the perception that the Scottish Government could govern Scotland more competently and capably than governments at Westminster. The logic ran that if Scots felt that the Scottish Government was more capable than Westminster, demand to empower Holyrood would grow and support for independence would grow alongside it.

Pro-independence campaigners along with MSP's march through the streets of Edinburgh to Carlton Hill. Picture by Stewart AttwoodPro-independence campaigners along with MSP's march through the streets of Edinburgh to Carlton Hill. Picture by Stewart Attwood (Image: Stewart Attwood)

Over the SNP’s first term, this approach bore fruit to a certain extent. Unsurprisingly, cultivating the impression of competent government grew support for the SNP. Their constituency vote grew by 12.5 points to 45.4%, and their regional list vote grew by 13 points to 44%, delivering the first and only single-party majority in the Scottish Parliament.

But support for independence did not budge. In the final Scottish Social Attitudes Survey before the SNP won power, conducted in January 2007, support for independence sat at 30%. In the three surveys conducted under the 2007-11 SNP government that asked about governing arrangements, support for independence varied between 28% and just 23%. In the first survey after the SNP won their majority, conducted in October 2011, 32% supported independence.

In fact, after the Edinburgh Agreement it was not until early 2014 that the polls began to move in the pro-independence camp’s favour. The Yes vote grew slightly, from around 32% to around 36% between January and March 2014, but it then remained there until August. Over that month the Yes campaign gained a little more ground, ending the month on around 39% of the vote, before spiking to 45% in the final two weeks of the campaign.

Almost half of the increase in support for independence between the SNP’s ground-breaking victory in 2011 and the 2014 referendum happened in the final two or three weeks of campaigning.

The SNP could not have secured a referendum without having built support for their party between 2007 and 2011, but – unsurprisingly – it was the politicians developing and articulating the case for independence, and the activists manning street stalls, pounding pavements, and persuading relatives and friends that built support for independence to the slightly-under-half of the population who support it today.

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So, in seeking to restore confidence in the SNP as a party of government and accepting that campaigning for independence may need to go on the back burner to do so, a critical tension emerges, a contradiction at the heart of the SNP’s strategy. In the current political environment, the SNP can either be the party of government or the leading campaigning force for independence, but it cannot be both. The gradualist strategy of Salmond and his contemporaries cannot be copied and pasted to today.

There are crucial choices before the SNP and the wider Scottish independence movement. The SNP must choose between campaigning with independence as ‘page one, line one’, and using the next 22 months before the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections to try to restore trust in their party by focusing on voters’ priorities and setting independence to one side.

The independence movement more broadly must choose whether to accept that the SNP’s choice in this matter means fading into the political background for the time being or finding ways to work around the SNP. In the past, the SNP accounting for 90% of the independence movement was not a problem, as it carried that movement to power and secured a referendum for it. That is no longer the case.

In making these choices, the independence movement and the various groups within it need to bear three things in mind.

Firstly, while parliamentary and electoral politics are crucial to demonstrating support for independence, they are not vehicles for growing that support. The SNP may have laid the groundwork for the growth in support for independence in August and September 2014, but it was the broad Yes campaign that delivered. Alternative party-political vehicles contesting elections alongside the SNP will not achieve a pro-independence majority.

Secondly, building that majority for independence will have to come before any future efforts to secure a referendum. At this point, the independence movement must accept that future votes on secession will only ever be confirmatory referendums to establish what is already known to be the reality on the ground.

SNP leader and First Minister John SwinneySNP leader and First Minister John Swinney (Image: free)

And thirdly, secessionist contention – like any form of contentious or social movement politics – is episodic, and in turn, episodes of contention are triggered when the opportunity for contention arises and social or political groups manage to grasp the opportunity. Right now, the grounds on which a pro-independence majority can be built are infertile. But that will not remain the case forever.

Successful independence movements are rare but it is possible to build one. Today, for the Scottish independence movement, that means establishing the formal and informal networks and infrastructure needed to take advantage of the opportunity to further develop support for independence when that opportunity arises. For the reasons I’ve outlined here, that infrastructure will likely have to extend far beyond the SNP itself.

Figuring out what that renewed movement looks like will take time, but the independence movement has time on its side. What is yet to be seen is if it possesses the creativity and political imagination to succeed in this task and to grasp opportunity when it comes knocking again.