WE’VE now had 15 opinion polls in a row showing majority support for independence, despite there being no official campaign, and despite an unrelenting attack on independence from a British media that doesn’t subject opponents of independence to a fraction of the same scrutiny.

Only on Sunday, we had the Gordosaur himself appearing on the Sophy Ridge show on Sky News where he was allowed to ramble incoherently about independence, during which he referred to Scotland as a region and was allowed to make promises about federalism that he lacks the power to deliver.

Neither did Sophy Ridge point out to him or to the viewers that a major reason why Scottish independence is on the table again is because this is exactly what Gordon Brown did in 2014 – or think to ask him about his promise to Scotland in 2014 that if we voted No in that year’s referendum, within two years we’d be enjoying the nearest thing possible to federalism.

In the British media it’s as though the promises and commitments of the Better Together campaign didn’t happen, so they can endlessly be repeated on a loop in the hope that they can persuade Scotland again the next time round.

Yet despite some extremely favourable poll results, both for support for independence and for support for the SNP at next year’s Holyrood elections, combined with a discredited Britsh nationalism which has no answers or solutions, a Labour Party which is consumed by a civil war, and Scottish Conservatives who are wracked with resignations and an ineffectual new leader who is struggling to make an impression, all is not rosy in the independence movement’s garden.

You’d have to have been hiding under a rock not to notice the growing disquiet in the wider movement about a perceived lack of vigour from the SNP about ensuring that Scotland achieves the second independence referendum which is the key to securing independence.

There is a rising frustration among grassroots activists that they are being asked to “wheesht for indy” and trust in the SNP to deliver while that same SNP offers them precious little in the way of reassurances or information.

The recent elections to the SNP’s NEC and the changing of the guard on the party’s ruling body went some way to assuaging those grassroots misgivings and providing a degree of confidence that the party might demonstrate a new-found zeal and vigour in pursuing independence, a zeal which many feel has hitherto been lacking.

The election could have gone a very long way to healing the internal divisions and allowing both the SNP and the wider independence movement to move forward as one with renewed energy and enthusiasm. However the wounds had scarcely been bandaged when along comes SNP MP Alyn Smith with a petulant and self-indulgent article in The National in which he accepted the results of the NEC elections with a graceless resentment which is more commonly associated with Donald Trump facing up to an election defeat. This was not an article which was intended to help to allow the party and the movement to move on and to unite. Rather it was a frankly childish display of egoism in which Alyn put his own need to vent his frustrations ahead of what is best for the party and the movement.

All it achieved was to put the boot in to an open wound just at the point where there was a hope that it could start to heal.

Meanwhile, other SNP politicians seem to have decided that the best forum for airing their disagreements with colleagues is through unseemly exchanges on social media. Yet others prefer the more sleekit approach of giving off the record briefings to anti-independence journalists in an attempt to undermine their colleagues.

They are so hell-bent on damaging other politicians within the SNP with the aim of promoting themselves that they don’t care about the damage they are doing to the cause of independence. They are prioritising their own careers and their own egos over the goal that so many thousands of us are working so hard and sacrificing for in order to achieve. It is reprehensible, it is unforgivable, and it needs to stop. Now.

It is all very well for the SNP’s elected representatives to expect the wider indy movement to “wheesht for indy” but if that is the case, the example needs to be set from the top. The first people who should wheesht for indy should be the SNP’s own politicians.

That means no more petulant and foot-stamping articles in the media because you are unhappy with the outcome of an internal party election. It means dealing with your disagreements with your party colleagues privately and without taking them to social media.

It means shutting your gob when there are grassroots initiatives that you don’t personally support.

And above all it means putting an end to the cancer of giving anonymous briefings to the British nationalist press in order to undermine your colleagues and advance your own career.

Because when you don’t all that you are doing is sending a signal to the wider movement that the priority is not independence, it’s to attack others in the movement with whom you have disagreements on strategy or on policies which are not themselves directly related to Scottish independence.

If we are to move forward with a unified movement that demands discipline and unity of purpose from all of us, but above all it ought to be demanded and expected of those we elect to represent us. They have an obligation to put the needs of the movement first and to set that example which they expect the rest of us to follow.

If anyone ought to wheesht for indy it should be those to whom we have entrusted our votes. That’s the only way to rebuild trust and belief in the party in the wider independence movement and to ensure that we can achieve the largest possible majority for pro-independence parties in the crucial election that lies ahead in May next year.