It’s still not six months since advocates of Scottish independence suffered a huge electoral setback.
As the year turns, are things looking better? Are we back?
Not yet. I see a lot of people getting excited this month about opinion polls showing a majority for independence. In particular there’s been spate of linking Indy to various alternative hypotheses. How would you vote if Nigel Farage were Prime Minister? If we had a republic? If we had a well-being economy?
The problem is not that these questions are fanciful. It’s simply that they are not a good guide to the likelihood of people voting for Scotland to become an independent country.
We’ve been here before. Remember all those people who said they would embrace Indy if Brexit happened? And if Boris Johnson became PM? In the end they didn’t.
That’s because there is a world of difference between people thinking something is agreeable and them being prepared to make it happen. To win we need not only to persuade people that being and independent country is a nice idea, but that it is necessary to achieve the type of society they aspire to. Then we need to convince them that it is also possible by presenting a plausible road map to that end.
Opinion polls are important. A sustained period of majority public support will speed the journey to independence. But it is not a shortcut. It doesn’t mean you can just miss out a few stages and avoid the hard political work.
Besides given the dreadful mess Labour are making of UK government, and the unsavoury contest between the Tories and Reform on the British right, who wouldn’t consider any alternative the status quo. But we need to be better that the least bad option.
2025 must be year when we go beyond mitigating the effects of Westminster and create a convincing narrative about how the political power that comes with independent self-government is necessary to make our lives better.
Some of this is pretty obvious stuff. Take energy policy. The terrain of Scotland is blessed with a magnificent bounty of clean renewable energy. Yet the people who live here pay through the nose for power, many cannot afford to stay warm and comfortable, and the big corporations are recording record profits.
Our energy should be owned by us. Not that there’s no role for private companies, but they must operate within a public interest framework. This cannot happen overnight. But it will not happen at all unless a Scottish government has the political authority in Scotland to regulate energy companies and create new public ones. You need independence for that.
Another example is housing. If we want to tackle the shortage of homes in years rather than decades, we need to build public housing on a scale not seen for fifty years.
This requires state action. It requires the marshalling of resources on a national scale and over several generations. It requires major public borrowing and investment, and the ability to direct private equities. You need independence for that.
We must also present political independence as necessary to reset an ossified system of governance from which so many have become alienated. This is part of the attraction of Reform.
I don’t argue, for instance, that abolishing the monarchy should be a pre-condition for supporting independence. But there can be no doubt that the notion of electing the country’s head of state is an attractive alternative to a hereditary monarchy which epitomises the British class system. You need independence if people are ever to get that choice.
Democratic renewal has other aspects too. A better network of councils than the one imposed by Michael Heseltine for starters, with more scope and more agency. Genuine decentralisation and localisation of power in communities. Bold imaginative proposals to change how we are governed will help overcome cynicism and despair.
Creating a new believable prospectus for independence is only part of what needs to be done. We must also explain to people how they can make that choice. Which brings us to the right of self-determination.
Ten years ago, there was no question that the people who lived in Scotland had the right to determine how they should be governed. Indeed the 2014 referendum was exactly the exercise of that right. The UK parliament accepted and respected the right of Scots to make their own decision.
This is not the constitutional situation we find ourselves in today. The Supreme Court has ruled that people in Scotland being able to choose their own future is not a right, but a dispensation to be granted by Westminster and entirely dependent upon the consent of the UK. This is now the law. It must be changed.
Which is why as we prepare for the next election, we need to be clear that what is at stake is not whether Scotland becomes independent, but whether the people who live here are ever again allowed to consider that option.
A vote for the SNP will always be an indication of support for Scotland’s independence. But the mandate we should seek from the people is for a campaign to change the law of the UK so that they have the right to choose it.