WITH hindsight, that sensational night back in May 2015 when the SNP stormed to victory in 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats now looks the worst thing could have happened to the independence movement.

First because it raised expectations to impossible heights, which meant that what would have been the SNP’s best-ever election result last Thursday has been written off as a disaster for the party and the broader independence cause.

Second – and even more damaging in my opinion – what had been a broad coalition became subsumed into a single political party.

The SNP can hardly be blamed for gaining thousands of new members in the wake of the referendum defeat – especially given that Yes Scotland shut up shop the day after the vote. Nor can the SNP reasonably be blamed for winning a landslide victory. The 45 per cent who voted Yes were desperate to inflict revenge on Scottish Labour for colluding with the Tories, and voting SNP was the obvious way to do it. But lessons now need to be learned about how the SNP have used that concentrated power.

Nicola Sturgeon herself has not pretended last Thursday is anything other than a major setback and has promised to look at what might have been done differently.

Many people thought we were on a linear trajectory to independence after the 2015 landslide. I was carried away with the excitement myself. But in any long-term struggle, defeats are inevitable – and can even be positive if the right lessons are learned.

Nicola played a blinder in the last referendum and I don’t envy the responsibility she assumed when Alex Salmond resigned. But no one person, or party, has all the answers. Hopefully, she will now reflect upon and listen to constructive criticism from the diverse voices in the independence movement.

The last few years have been frustrating for people like me. I’ve voted SNP in all six elections since 2011, not because I universally approve of the party’s policies, or want to see an SNP government in perpetuity, but to help further the cause of independence. But I have no influence over the policy or strategy of the party.

Like tens of thousands of other SNP voters, I find it frustrating that the party does not offer the kind of radical vision and policies that I believe are necessary to inspire enough people to choose an independent future. And it’s discombobulating when huge announcements like “ScotRef” take the whole movement by surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, I think calling a second independence referendum was a brave decision. But it was then left hanging in the air, even during the election. While the Unionists went on the warpath, there was no counter-offensive. Instead of taking the arguments head-on, the SNP stuck to bland banalities about standing up for Scotland.

Yes, everyone was wrong-footed by Theresa May’s decision. But I believe we could have bolstered and even strengthened support for independence by rising to the challenge and rekindling the spirit of 2014 by mobilising the broad independence movement around the case for a new independent Scotland. Instead, the SNP allowed this to become a one-sided Unionist onslaught against the idea of a second independence referendum.

Understandably, many people – and young people especially – found Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign more exciting. His programme is not the red-blooded socialism portrayed in the media and by some of his more excitable supporters. Far less radical than even the Old Labour manifestos of the 1980s, it was a compromise with the Blairites, which for example forced Corbyn – a vice-chair of CND – to fight on a programme that included spending billions of public money renewing Trident.

On other issues, it was no different to the SNP’s programme. Yet that was all just like the small print on an insurance policy nobody reads.

CORBYN – reinforced by the hysteria of the right-wing press — appeared to be offering a bold vision of change, while Nicola talked about a seat at the table in the Brexit negotiations. Society is polarising between left and right. The soggy middle ground is crumbling. And the SNP need to get out of the quagmire.

What happens next in the UK is unclear. But in Scotland, that immense movement for independence –which played a major part in the rise of Corbyn in England – has been seriously weakened for now.

Anyone who follows me on my Facebook will know that I’ve been equally critical of some groups on the pro-independence left who became so swept by Corbynmania that they ended up calling for people to vote for the fervently Unionist, anti-Corbyn Scottish Labour Party.

Those who are serious about independence – rather than just seeing it as a tactic that can be discarded like a warm jacket when the weather changes – should in my opinion have called clearly for a pro-independence vote in Scotland, while supporting the Corbyn movement in England.

Corbyn’s great upsurge of support was inspirational and showed that a near universally hostile media can be faced down and defeated. But in Scotland it helped deliver not just Unionist Labour MPs, but also Tories and Lib Dems. In the SNP-Tory battleground constituency of Gordon, for example, the Labour vote almost doubled, even though it was a wasted vote. Had the SNP held the Labour vote down to its 2015 level, Salmond would have held the seat rather than losing it to a Tory.

Without a strong SNP, we have no realistic prospect of achieving independence. And whatever its faults, the SNP has at least maintained a principled stand on nuclear weapons, immigration, restoration of benefit cuts and, crucially, Scotland’s right to self-determination. None of that can be said for Scottish Labour.

But for the SNP to regain the strength that brought us so close in 2014, it needs to think long and hard about where to rebuild its support base.

Is it among the business community? Among the farmers and fishermen? Among the most highly paid professionals? Among the more affluent pensioners?

Among all these groups there are people who will support independence. But given all the evidence of the last three years, it’s time to be frank about which social classes will deliver independence. The numbers will never stack up unless we can convince the millions of low-paid workers, people on benefits, carers, struggling pensioners, young people on zero-hours contacts, and those in the frontline of delivering our public services.

This isn’t a simplistic choice between rural and urban Scotland. There are wealthy elites in the cities, just as there are minimum-wage service workers in the hills and glens.

The lack of bold and radical policies emanating from the SNP has propelled the development of alternative ideas and policies in the broader independence movement. Groups like Women for Independence and Common Weal have felt drawn into almost being lobby groups.

But if the SNP were to be bolder and see the wider movement as complimentary, a more symbiotic and productive relationship could develop. And the movement can get out there — listening to and speaking with those who are not yet persuaded.