Alex Salmond’s “once in a generation” claim was hyperbole. The 2014 referendum was an interregnum. The issue of Scotland’s constitutional future has still to be definitely decided.  When that test will come, I know not. That it will come I am certain, and optimistic about the result.

The justified electoral hammering given to the SNP as represented by the Scottish Government has led many unionists camp to believe independence is dead. That is a mistake born out of a misunderstanding of the long-term importance of what happened on the Yes side during the 2014  campaign. 

In February 2014 polling in favour of independence was 29 per cent. By 18th September it was at 45 per cent in the real poll.  The reason was that Yes became more than a campaign led by the SNP. Groups sprang up all over Scotland, drawing in people not hitherto engaged in a political event, who brought knowledge and commitment that, in hundreds of packed meetings, turned into a national teach-in.

The input of Academics for Independence, the Radical Independence Campaign, Artists for Independence, Women for Independence, and many others, helped open eyes and ears to the reality of our relationship with England, and produced a self-belief and sense of worth and ambition to thousands not usually so deeply involved in national affairs. As one working class woman stated at my final meeting “Me and my neighbours have had our eyes opened, and they will never be able to take us in again.”

That Yes national teach-in did not provide constitutional victory, but it created a high platform of support for independence, based upon a new sense of self-confidence made immune to forecasts of self-destruction if we opt to leave the wee brother role in the UK.  A high level of support that may not have advanced, but has not retreated, and remains unshakable in its core belief.

Jim SillarsJim Sillars (Image: Newsquest)

However, the Yes movement of today is not the vibrant body of ten years ago. If judged on the SNP, its electoral wing, it is lost, flat as a pancake, in a bunker of denial, heading for another hiding. The movement is split – SNP-ALBA – and splintered with dozens of self-created organisations working away in isolation on policies; no cross referencing, no coordination, a national movement without a national organisation.

How did it come to this? Step forward Nicola Sturgeon. She inherited that 45 per cent when it was still alive and kicking. She boasts of her election victories, like the 56 out of 59 seats in 2015, when the truth is that any SNP leader able to call on 45 per cent of the electorate in our Westminster system could do no other than triumph.  It is what she did or didn’t do with that gifted political supremacy that explains today.

She wasted it. The informal national Yes organisation, based on branches in every part of Scotland, was not formalised but allowed to wither and finally disappear. Perhaps she thought her majority, her single-person leadership, the spectacular increase in membership, and her own SNP branch system, was enough. Certainly, everything seemed to be in place for her to build the 45 per cent to a level that could not be denied a second referendum.  That would have taken time, patience and policymaking subject to intellectual vigour, and another teach-in.  But she didn’t build. She chose instead to become fixated on demanding an immediate referendum: the cart before the horse policy.

A historic based 45 per cent, with no indication of that moving to an indisputable majority had no political or moral authority for such a demand to succeed. The public, including the 45 per cent knew that, yet she spent all that 2015 political capital on its pursuit, with the SNP becoming the referendum party instead of the independence party. This transformation was made clear by Nicola’s emphasis in the 2021 Holyrood election that the vote then was not about independence.  The result of that fundamental misjudgement, along with a gathering incompetence in government, arrogant control of the party, and a catastrophic decision to bring down Salmond, has led to shambles, defeat and a BBC soap drama.

No wonder the unionists think it is all over, with only the sad delusional delegates at the SNP conference appearing to believe John Swinney will make the happy days come back again. True, the SNP is not a pretty sight, but that doesn’t apply to the rest of the movement, and those dozens of groups working away in the quiet, under the political radar, blessed with the understanding of the serious work to be done to create a new national organisation, and on policy. Both will be underway before the year is out.

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That is one of my grounds for optimism, there is another of profound importance: the unionist case for Scotland remaining in the UK is no longer viable. In 2014 Scots were told it was imperative for our prosperity to shelter under the umbrella of the economically powerful British state. Such a claim would be absurd now, and will remain so in future. As a headline in the Daily Telegraph put it “The UK is a poor country pretending to be rich.” It is food bank Britain in which nothing works. The pillars and institutions  of the state: parliament, justice system, military, police, in-built religious order, NHS, BBC are crumbling in this final period of imperial decline. A decline no longer manageable, but accelerating.  It cannot save itself, never mind us up here.

Once the Yes movement gets itself together, engages in policymaking that identifies what this energy rich small country can do to lift itself onto a different and better level economically and socially, and drives home the message, through another national teach-in,  that there is no future except decline and failure in being permanently attached to England and Wales, support for independence will rise and rise, and we, from a position of growing strength will set the agenda for when the next referendum takes place.