WHEN tents appeared in Glasgow’s George Square over the past weeks, some believed it was a protest for independence – inspired by Edinburgh’s "IndyCamp". It isn’t that simple. Everyone I met there was homeless or ex-homeless. They had gathered in desperation and to find a community. “I either sleep here or on a concrete pavement,” one of the men told me.

It’s a symbolic case of the national question masking the social divisions within Scotland. We remain divided by class more so than by any constitutional view. One in five children here grow up in poverty. More than 100,000 people use food banks. Education, health and housing are scared by deep inequality. Yet, because it is all we have ever known, too often this is considered normal.

It isn’t. With greater borrowing, tax and social security powers coming to Scotland, our political leaders will be judged on what actions they take to reduce poverty and inequality. There is no greater or immediate cause than that. There can be no excuses.

Unique academic research, released on what would have been Scotland’s independence day, confirmed that the Yes campaign was left-wing and driven by a belief that greater powers were an opportunity for greater equality.

The SNP, with an unprecedented polling lead, should be bold. Yet, especially on tax, they’re squandering the opportunity to tackle inequality. If they return a majority, the regressive council tax will stay. The richest one per cent will keep their Tory income tax cut. Frequent flyers and corporate airlines will pocket a 50 per cent tax cut in Air Passenger Duty (worth approximately £750 million over a parliament).

Political spin presents such financial tinkering as progressive victories. But do the maths. Even with the alterations to LBTT (Land and Buildings Transaction Tax), the top council tax bands, and rejection of Osborne’s latest income tax giveaway, there will be no serious attempt to redistribute wealth under the SNP.

Campaigners in the party beg for patience, as New Labour recommended in 1997, and claim that serious tax action on inequality is just over the horizon. They say the council tax fudge will be revisited and that a future land tax is the real road to equality and prosperity.

My response is: "Prove it". Recent SNP tax announcements have blown apart any certainty that the SNP is serious about tackling inequality through taxation. Such commitments weren’t in the party’s 2011 manifesto and I don’t expect any this time around either.

That leaves an open door for the Scottish Green Party and the Rise coalition to aim for when chasing second votes. Why are the SNP leadership making it so easy for them?

As Scottish Trades Union Congress General Secretary Grahame Smith put it: “If the Scottish Government can’t summon the courage to propose major progressive change at this moment in time, we have to ask if it ever will.”

That’s the most worrying indictment. The political cost of inaction is far greater than the money a 50p rate of tax would have raised. Sturgeon’s leadership has consistently used left-wing rhetoric to mask cautious, centre-ground policies: on land reform, fracking, on TTIP, and now on tax.

In future, when more important economic questions emerge after independence, the same culture of risk aversion will cause problems.

Will there ever be a land tax to break up Scotland’s feudal estates? Will the profits from Scotland’s vast wealth in corporate-controlled oil, whisky and finance ever be distributed fairly? Will inequality in the labour market ever be confronted with a national living wage and strengthened trade union rights?

The answer, to a great extent, lies in whether the party’s 115,000 members remain unquestionably loyal to the cautious managerialism of party HQ. Malcolm Kerr, convener of the SNP Isle of Arran branch, was cheered at this month’s conference when he scolded the “complacent, self-congratulatory” weekend.

But public dissent remains rare. And that suggests a cautious approach – for at least the five years until a second referendum – will remain SNP doctrine.

If independence matters more to you than inequality, then that approach may win your approval. But I didn’t campaign for independence in the name of caution. It was the desperate need to create a better democracy and a more equal society today that drove my passion for a Yes vote.

Thousands still demand a better world in keeping with our vast human potential. We are loud, rebellious and hopeful.

We are not going away. And we won’t wait for a promised land, when half the tools to build that society are now in our hands.