‘NOBODY necessarily stays anywhere for ever.” Those were the curt, careless words of lead Tory candidate for prime minister Theresa May. With leadership ambitions running high, confirming the rights for three million EU nationals to live in the UK was just too much. So a community with the population of Wales was dismissed as a bargaining chip for “negotiations”.

This is the post-Brexit climate: an almighty political muddle with no UK leadership, and no basic plan for stability on key issues. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

In the run-up to the independence referendum media outlets focused intensely on economic questions large and small. “Uncertainty and risk”, as the No campaign termed it, were the buzzwords of the day.

This, naturally, caused great frustration to proponents of independence, who wanted to focus on the positive case for democratic, social, economic, and international change. The more the Yes campaign provided information and evidence – including a 650-page civil service-authorised prospectus – the more opponents criticised the blueprint. The Tory Chancellor George Osborne even attempted to sabotage potential negotiations by threatening to sink any currency union.

Flash forward two years and the prospective Tory leader doesn’t want to guarantee three million people the right to stay in the UK. The scale of “risk and uncertainty” with the UK exit is off the scale. Without even basic contingency planning, at least two years of negotiations will place the rights of people and industries in the hands of a Tory government without support in Scotland.

Politics has now changed. In 2014 it was supporters of independence constantly under pressure to provide economic evidence and plans for a transition. Now, as the UK Union and its leaders are flailing in the wind, it’s their turn.

Will the UK Government confirm, absolutely, the rights of 170,000 EU nationals to live and work in Scotland? How will the UK replace the €580m a year in EU funding to Scottish farmers? How will the trading rights and recognition of the Scotch whisky industry be protected? Will Scotland’s financial services sector retain its current EU market exchange rights? What about Horizon 2020 research support to Scotland’s universities?

With Tory leaders promising to end free movement, will that mean an end to our rights to travel to and work in 27 different countries? Will that now mean tighter passport controls?

These are just a few unanswered questions that impact hundreds of thousands of jobs in Scotland, and citizenship rights that people have taken for granted across generations. That’s before considering the renewed threats to Scotland’s funding package.

Tory incompetence has put EU citizens, Scottish universities, farming, and the whisky, food and finance sectors all at risk. It’s clear that these interests will be subsumed in Brexit negotiations by the Tory fixation on reducing immigration – something Scotland’s economy needs more of!

That pantomime will roll on for years, with jobs and industry in Scotland mere bargaining chips to the thespians at Westminster. Just as Scottish fisheries were sold out, just as mines and factories were closed, economic interests here will not dominate the minds of Tory negotiators.

With the real risks and uncertainties revealing themselves, minds are changing. All surviving Labour MPs who moved from Westminster to the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 are now supportive of independence, due in no small part to the new economic realities of a UK exit. That’s an important change.

However, no one can or should dismiss the economic challenges for an independent Scotland. Those were, after all, the main reasons two million people were not convinced last time around. Most pressingly, evidence that Scotland’s fiscal position will be strengthened is needed.

That means explaining how industrial, investment, borrowing, migration and innovation policies can strengthen the economy; and that dividends from cutting Trident and excessive UK military spending can be reinvested.

Having a plan to confront economic challenges – such as the transition from fossil fuels, the national deficit, or concentrations of unemployment – is exactly why independence is needed most. We shouldn’t shirk these questions: they can be answered with clarity, while the UK is leaving a vacuum.

The democratic and social case for independence was powerful before, and will be again while the Tories are in charge. Demonstrating serious thinking on the economy is now what many independence supporters should put their minds to.

But that burden doesn’t just fall on our shoulders any more. The economy is unstable. The UK has provided no clear plan, and its leaders are in disarray. Unionists now have to provide answers for Scotland’s economic future every single day for the next two years. How will they deliver? How can you guarantee anything with Tory leaders we didn’t vote for?

With the economic debate changed, ultimately many will come to an important conclusion: Scotland now faces economic uncertainty and flux. Scottish independence within the EU, with a clear economic direction, provides far more economic security than the alternative.

Michael Gray @GrayInGlasgow is a journalist with CommonSpace.scot