‘Let’s start raising our voices, and create our own forward momentum, so powerful and hopeful it will sweep away the voices of doom, gloom and negativity.’

For generations within the union, Scottish identity and national confidence has been subject to a political engineered onslaught, creating a mindset known as ‘the Scottish cringe’. It’s a colonial mindset, designed to foster low self esteem.

The 2007-14 era was unique in challenging that and promoting Scottish national confidence. An explosion of new voices and talent, fresh ideas and visions whipped Scotland into a wholly different place. Almost overnight in 2013-14, organisations like the Radical Independence Campaign sprung up, holding events with over 2,000 people to discuss a new kind of politics, change never before possible suddenly became so via independence. 

On doorsteps in places like Glasgow East, non-voters who’d been diffident, wary, cynical about politics, became the speakers who months later stood in front of audiences arguing for independence.

Now it feels Scotland is once again being relentlessly downtrodden. Turned back to apathy and depression, a country with no self-belief or hope. A climate of no debate and silencing has stifled not only political discussion but also the arts, culture and everything that isn’t an establishment voice. 

It’s telling that the post Sturgeon SNP remains reliant on old men like John Swinney and Mike Russell, from before the 2007-14 Salmond era. Where younger people were promoted, it’s those like Ben McPherson - sent to bore everyone into apathy and manage expectations to zero. Or cringe-inducing embarrassments like Kirsty Blackman, who isn’t sure what sex she is but suspects her chromosomes might be XY. Key skills required were unshakable loyalty to Sturgeon and a willingness to attack anyone daring to dissent. Working class Scottish voices are non-existent.

We couldn’t be in a more different position from 2014, or have any less hope of real change from our political classes.

So how did we arrive here?

In 2017 the independence movement had, in hindsight, reached a pinnacle. After decades of hard slog, Scotland had finally elected the SNP, our pro-independence party. Not marginally, but with 56 out of 59 MPs. This number was unthinkable before the referendum campaign: they had 6 MPs in 2010, and it was assumed first past the post would keep them out. In 2015, it instead created a tipping point for them. A 62% remain vote in the Brexit referendum the following year should have ensured Scotlnad’s electorate were at least given a voice and a choice in their future.

But that pinnacle in 2017 was far bigger than the SNP and its electoral success: it was a chess board with pieces in a seemingly unassailable position. Not only did we have 56/59 MPs and a clear mandate to remain in Europe, but we also had a high profile, internationally recognised pro-indy former First Minister, unleashed from the responsibility of office and about to take a serious role in media ownership. We had a QC in Westminster, fighting the UK government on prorogation and human rights. A huge, energetic, united Yes movement was raring to go and had entrusted a fighting fund of £600,000 to the SNP. In addition to our political vehicle being elected, we also had new media like Wings over Scotland as one of the most read UK political blogs, think tanks such as Commonweal, marches far in excess of a hundred thousand. In addition we appeared, at that point, to have a strong current First Minister in Nicola Sturgeon. The momentum built in 2014 had carried us that far.

The stage was set for exactly what was needed next: confidence and a muscular response from those we’d elected and trusted to lead the movement. There should have been demands that Scotland’s democratic right be respected, especially over Europe, and our right to choose our form of government and alliances.

Instead, what happened in 2017 was the precise opposite. From that extremely hard built position, the SNP leadership turned on every single other strategic chess piece we, the Scottish electorate and independence movement, had created and maneuvered into place, and wiped them off the board.

It began with the SNP joining Kezia Dugdale and the unionist media in an unfair - deemed defamatory in court - attacks on Wings. Then there was the Salmond stitch up - now well documented elsewhere. Attacks began on Joanna Cherry, on Commonweal, on AOUB and even on the organisers of marches. The movement was further split using culture wars imported from the US. The chance of a post Brexit supermajority created a form of joint unionist-SNP hysteria. Then after winning, Sturgeon booted our sovereignty to the UK Supreme Court and left a party, movement and country in chaos.

Whether anything comes of the police investigation and arrests remains to be seen, but either way, it gives an impression and optics of an ending: the SNP and independence movement taken down from its 2014-15 high. It’s clear from unionist commentators they believe they have won and the UK and Scottish establishments are fully back in control.

There is little point hand-wringing about the past near decade of wasted time. It has happened; it’s in the past and, however angry we may be, we need to move forward.

So how?

First, we need to recognise that, despite all these setbacks, we are still gaining. Despite the best efforts of all in the political and media establishment to destroy the movement and its momentum - most damagingly from within - support for independence remains steady. Scotland has radically changed. If the constitution can be thought of as a continuum we have all, as a country, moved along it since 2011. Those who see it as critical and urgently required after Brexit, not only for Scotland but for England and the rest of the UK, aren’t about to change our minds. If anything, replacing argument and debate with ever greater lies and attacks hardens it.

But even those not yet convinced have moved, if only in accepting the fact that independence is now normalised as a mainstream idea. That forward momentum, however, is not guaranteed to continue, and nothing in politics is ever standing still. 

If independence loses momentum, unionism will gain it. There’s no more surefire way to kill momentum than the tactic the SNP engaged in between 2015 and 2021, of raising excitement and hope every year or so for an election then whipping it away and demanding silence. They have created a momentum of mediocrity, and their next phase - it can’t be done; it’s decades away; let’s look at devo-max will reverse it entirely, in other words hand it to the unionists.

In that sense, the emergence of new Independence parties, as the SNP becomes the establishment and part of that backwards drag, is the next part of any further progress along the continuum. Independence is a radical change which opens possibilities and visions way beyond the constraints of unionism. We can be rid of Trident, the monarchy, have our own currency, choose our alliances and unions. It’s right we have a plurality of parties with different visions. It’s unionism now which offers nothing beyond an increasingly far right, broken, Brexit Britain.

‘But it’ll take too long to build new parties,’ some will say. Yes, it can be a long process - it took 80 years to build the SNP to where it was in 2015. However time passes regardless. It might take five to ten years to learn the piano or write a novel. If you never start, you end up in the exact same place in another 5 or 10 years, still wishing you could play piano or had written that novel. We need to be building parties now, so they are in place and fully functioning the moment the electorate is ready to vote for them. For voters, if you want those new parties quicker, help build them and start voting for them sooner.

One ridiculous claim from some SNP supporters in 2021 was that it’s ‘cheating’ to have two different pro independence parties to vote for. An abject surrender of our best chance at a strong pro-independence parliament, which would have changed the entire narrative, right after Brexit. The fact is, every Scottish based party is pro-independence; every London based one fighting against. No one has complained about three or more English parties all against Scottish independence, all offering Scotland nothing but that status quo. Scotland can vote for as many Scottish based parties with differing visions of our future as we want: that is not cheating. Especially not in a system set up to deny any one party (ie the SNP when Holyrood was set up by Westminster) a majority. It’s democracy, and that’s something we should all be fighting for and striving to improve.

Each will have different policies and visions for an independent Scotland, but that’s what normal, grown up democracies are: a competing set of ideas and debates, represented by a plurality of parties. This is not a negative for independence but a positive, a way to demonstrate the paucity of the status quo offering. Unionists and devolutionists cannot even take part in debates about the EU v EFTA, Trident, the monarchy etc, because their future vision is blinkered to one direction only: do whatever London says. It’s why stifling those wanting such discussions is all they have.

And this is why the SNP is now on the horns of a dilemma. It cannot get away with endlessly lying about the mandate it’s demanding. If that mandate is not independence, it’s defending a devolution which, post Brexit and the Internal Market Bill, now serves no purpose other than lining a few pockets. It offers no real ability to change anything: its existence was always predicated on that. If that is now the SNP position, what is an SNP vote for? What mandate will it stand on? GRR and working with Gordon Brown on another ‘vow’? Asking for yet another S30, then settling down for another five years when refused?

Another consideration now is how fit the SNP are as a party, not only to gain us independence, but to negotiate it afterwards. The Sturgeon years of hounding out talent, promoting mediocrity and creating division has left a party denuded of any real talent.

Salmond’s offer of a Scotland United ticket is clever in that it forces the SNP as a party, or its MPs individually, to either commit to an independence mandate, or admit they’re not standing for it and say truthfully what they are standing for. It also gives the wider movement a chance to remove the worst SNP MPs and MSPs, perhaps standing strong, independent, candidates instead. 

Were such a strategy successful, with every constituency represented by one Scotland United Yes candidate, the 2024 election would become an event like 2014, where the entire movement could come together and campaign for genuine independence, with a variety of parties offering different visions for that, and bringing different constituencies with them, including large numbers of the politically alienated who otherwise won’t vote.

The danger, for those who support independence, is that few from the SNP sign up, others stand, and the vote is split. In that case, unionists will gain. However, in that event, it’s likely the unionist parties will find it a pyrrhic victory. (In the absence of a supermajority after 2021, it might have been better to have an uneasy Tory-Lab alliance in Holyrood, administering Brexit and GRA with an SNP in opposition as a genuinely pro independence voice - independence support may well have skyrocketed while the SNP recovered in opposition, but that’s in the past now too).

There are two election results I particularly remember: 1992 when a Labour victory was assumed, and the sense of depression the following day was palpable. The second was the 2007 Scottish one. I’d never voted SNP in 2007 as, although I supported independence, it seemed impossible, the Lib Dem’s full fiscal autonomy more achievable. However, on waking up to an SNP victory, I found myself surprisingly happy - options for real change opened up and as soon as the new, fragile, minority government started governing confidently, for example changing the Scottish ‘Executive’ to ‘Government’, something lifted in the Scottish psyche.

I strongly suspect that, the day after any major gains for unionsts parties, a similar but opposite effect will take hold: people might feel unexpectedly depressed. It will be a major step backwards for Scotland, back to the dark, depressing days of cringe and hopelessness, ever further away from that chink of light 2014 brought. Even people who are not convinced about independence may feel a surprising sense of loss as they watch unionists crow over ‘the death of independence’ and sense momentum slipping into reverse.

Ultimately, however much common ground the political and media establishment, SNP included, have in their commitment to the status quo, any tinkering with the devolution settlement can only ever be that: tinkering around the edges while power bleeds back to London. There is no hope in that, no possibility of change, far less radical change.

It may be, however, that this kick in the guts and electoral wake-up call to the SNP is what’s now needed for progress to be made. If we have to resign ourselves to independence not being just around the corner - and a tacit admittance that the SNP has been lying for years for votes while acting as a block to it - we may as well use that time to build back better and rid ourselves of our most problematic representatives. In the meantime, while whatever happens in 2024 plays out, those of us committed to independence ASAP need to be re-building like crazy.

We urgently need to regain our voices, start confidently shouting down those telling us ‘you cannae’. As well as new parties who can bring on new voices, we also need as much new media as possible, to re-create the cacophony of voices, talents and visions that exploded in 2014. Along with Swinney and Russell, we are still stuck with all the old media voices from pre-2007 droning the same old dross over and over. The establishment in Scotland believes it has won, yet has never been so out of touch with the people; so blind to the change that has happened around it as it luxuriates in its bubble.

We need to actively seek out debate, not allow it to be crushed by that controlling political and media elite. In particular, the voices of those always most alienated - those in poverty, in estates, far from power - need to be raised up once again against politicians who simply don’t care. As the SNP is beginning to find out, if you silence critical friends, they will become implacable foes.

I still have hope SNP politicians have an important part to play in all of this. I refuse to believe they’re all wedded to the status quo, and hope at least some will stand on a Scotland United independence mandate, even if the party as a whole rejects it. If nothing else, it will show who is really on our side. Even if that is a small number, far better a handful of committed people with backbone than a multitude of liars - the SNP achieved far more (for our benefit anyway) when it had 6 MPs than 56.

It’s time to grow up and move beyond One Great Leader and putting all our trust into one person or party. Real change will never come from parties in power, especially when the ‘Scottish’ Government remains firmly wedded to the UK civil service; the ‘Scottish’ media resolutely a unionist one; three ‘Scottish’ parties run from London. A more dynamic network of smaller organisations is already emerging with Salvo, Liberation, SSRG, the chain in October and the re-emergence of local Yes Groups. It’s harder without a government sanctioned date and event to work towards, as we had in 2014, but we can make our own such date every election, if we choose. 

So let’s start raising our voices, and create our own forward momentum so powerful and hopeful it will sweep away the voices of doom, gloom and negativity. The alternative is accepting that, despite where we were in 2017 and all the democratic change we’ve achieved, the UK establishment and its Scottish arm have indeed won. Scotland has been put back in its box, and our future is Brexit Britain with equally right wing Tory and Labour governments, enriching tame colonial administrators whose only intent is creating more “Scottish cringe”.