FAR from being the “hatefest” described by its more deranged critics, the 2014 referendum campaign electrified Scotland and left it engaged with political debate in more fiercely passionate ways than had been seen for decades.

The opportunity to reinvent our country in ways more in tune with the mainstream national culture proved seductive to voters of all ages and many different political persuasions.

It was the diversity of the Yes campaign which proved to be arguably its most attractive feature and a little more than 18 months later what is truly surprising is not the fractures caused by party political election campaigning but the sense of solidarity and unity of purpose that has survived.

One of this newspaper’s greatest ambitions when it launched in the wake of the referendum vote was to capture the breadth and scope of the entire Yes movement.

That is why were proud, and continue to be proud, to have among our columnists the Greens’ Patrick Harvie, Cat Boyd of Rise and other commentators aligned to no particular party.

And that is why we would be delighted to see representatives of the Greens and Rise among our MSPs when the votes have been counted in the early hours of Friday morning. The more pro-independent MSPS the better in our book.

But that idealism needs to be tempered by a sense of realism. There is only one party in Scotland with any chance of delivering independence and that party is the SNP. Its support for independence is not just one of a range of policies to be promoted or demoted in terms of priorities according to the winds of political expediency. Independence is its DNA, it’s raison d’être since its very formation. No one has done more to make that dream a reality, no one stands a better chance of crossing that final line.

To do so it needs a majority at Holyrood and it is with a heavy heart we must admit to reservations at recommending any vote which risk that majority.

The voting system in the Holyrood election has an admirable aim: to ensure that the parties’ representation of the parliamentary benches better reflect the proportion of votes they receive than does the undemocratic first-past-the-post system in use at the Westminster elections.

As a result the system makes it very difficult for any party to achieve an overall majority. It is wise to remember the scale of the SNP’s achievement in managing to win just such a majority and the size of the challenge to retain it.

The Scottish election voting system is challenging to grasp and impossible to manipulate to achieve a tactical aim. You might want to help a particular party win a list MSP without risking the SNP majority or a pro-union victory ... the voting system makes it virtually impossible to eliminate that risk.

You may, of course, believe that risk is worth taking because you wish to express your support for the Greens or for Rise or for any other party. That is, of course, an entirely reasonable position and no-one has to right to question it.

Even supporters of the SNP, including this newspaper, can believe that an effective opposition is an essential part of democracy and that even the most trustworthy of parties can be lulled into complacency and even corruption by the lack of checks and balances.

After the election attention can and must turn to repairing the tensions among the pro-independence parties.

But in the circumstances in which Scotland now finds itself – facing a possible Brexit and a likely Conservative victory at the next Westminster election – we believe that the best result in today’s election is as powerful an SNP majority as possible, ready to act when a second independence referendum is self-evidently in the best interests of the country. We hope our readers vote accordingly.


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