DO you believe in an independent Scotland? Yes. Do you think Thursday’s electoral result brings you closer, or puts you further away from that goal? Erm...

My own answer would be that it prepares us better for the opportunity of Indy – which might be sooner rather than later, depending on a certain Euro vote in June.

But this won’t soothe the pains of those who pounded the streets with clipboards and leaflets, with one hashtag message driving them through the rain and wind, in order to absolutely secure a majority for independence: #BothVotesSNP.

If there’s some healing to be done across the stretched frame of the #indy movement, we should start doing it here and now. A place to begin may be to state the obvious: we still have a pro-independence majority – indeed, exactly the same number as last time, 69 – this time comprising 63 SNP MSPs and six Green MSPs. The first place to apply some soothing balm would be to assure Scottish Nationalists of the strong commitment of the Greens to the achievement of Indy.

I’m happy to go personal on this. I sat on the Yes Scotland advisory board for two years, working with the Scottish Greens’ co-convenor Patrick Harvie. What impressed me most was his (to use a favourite campaign word) “constructive” behaviour. For example, it became clear, very early on, that Yes Scotland would largely be following the policy menu devised by the civil servants around Nicola Sturgeon, which turned into the White Paper.

More than a few of us had doubts about our ability to simply assert the credibility of a “sterling zone” or “single currency” to potential Yes voters – so easily could it be delegitimised, prior to the vote, by Whitehall or the Bank of England.

Even through the Greens strongly preferred a separate currency, Patrick did everything he could to maintain as much public unity as possible – carefully tailoring his media rhetoric, allowing Greens to appear on SNP campaign literature.

Harvie was trenchant about the importance of being able to separate the structures of an independent state from the policies that any party might be elected on within them. Can I suggest, given all that we know now about the Scottish public’s scepticism of the SNP’s Indy-lite assertions, that he may have had a point?

Based on my collegiate experience of working with Scottish Greens in Yes Scotland – our youngest new MSP Ross Greer was a runner and researcher there – I joined the party on September 19, 2014 (I left a few months ago because I felt constricted by party identity).

Like the SNP, the Greens membership increased several-fold after the indyref. Many of them will have joined in the same Yesser fervour as those who signed up to the SNP. Indeed, I know many from that moment who joined both – and remain in both! This is the kind of pluralism that we all exulted about in 2014 – and by virtue of your votes on Thursday, we’re at that same moment. Let’s presume that not all solutions reside within the operations of the SNP, or its government civil servants. Let’s drop the five-year tribal rivalries, and embrace the possibilities. Both the SNP and Greens share a commitment to proving the demand for a second Indyref before making moves to call one.

But can we be clear-eyed and honest about the nature of that demand, in the light of Thursday’s result? We’ll have to be. I think the message of the doubling of the Scottish Tory vote in this election is profound.

Right-wing columnists in the last 24 hours have taken to praising Ruth Davidson – and particularly her laser-like focus on those “700,000” Scots, identified by her political consultants, who respond with deep and loyal emotion to the idea of British Union.

Indy supporters have known for years that gentle “persuasion” – to quote Nicola Sturgeon’s Bute House speech yesterday – is the only really effective way to make the case with No voters. But those of us who perhaps did not “be the change we wished to see”, as much as we should have been with our No voting compatriots, are having our comeuppance. The chatty Tory tank-commander has posed convincingly to a broad-based audience, and has made the case that she will be their defender against the referendum the Yes minority seeks.

Oor Ruthie defends an audience who feel threatened by the enthusiasms and commitment of Indy supporters. When we noisily express our excitements for the new structures of a new state, they see an entirely unnecessary disruption – a level of insecurity and risk that no-one should intentionally embrace.

If these are “Yoons”, as the online argot has it, they have not only hardened up under our barrage, but wised up too. The New Unionists are far too sophisticated to be called “cringers”. Their conservatism (small-c) is switched-on, but no less dour and negative for all that.

One of the strangest sights in the last year has been that of JK Rowling’s performances on social media. What is a talented, billionaire-level, Edinburgh-based children’s novelist doing jousting with oddly named and foul-mouthed Twitter trolls, who themselves are connected to a web of satirists and snipes from the bargain-bins of commercial media?

Ruthie tries – with evident success – to embody both the truculent and the derisive elements of this New Unionist mindset. With her stints on Have I Got News For You, her comedy bestriding of bulls and tanks, she’s been steadily turning herself into the hands-on-hips scourge of all those ludicrous Nats and Yessers.

Now, even if the SNP’s third term turns out to be the World’s Most Managerial And Effective Government Ever, do you think it will make the tiniest impact on this implacable, seen-it-all, can’t-fool-me Unionism?

I don’t think that’s going to be enough. How do you beat irony and cynicism? With copious amounts of joy, warmth and interactivity. I think the SNP needs to be reminded of the fizzing variety and serious passions of the Yes movement. Even when there isn’t the hard deadline that brought such a movement into being.

I suggest that the Scottish Greens can bring all that to the next Parliament – if the SNP lets them.

I hope the Scottish Government properly opens the door to the Scottish Green Party. Not as tolerated local eccentrics to be hustled into various voting arrangements. But as serious partners in building what you could call a “Good Indy” culture and society.

A culture and society so attractive, involving, engaging and inspiring that it could banish the blues of any recalcitrant New Unionist. In doing so, is this a way to perhaps inch up those majority poll percentages towards the high 50 per cent?

The overlaps are already obvious. “Yes We Can” (the old SNP slogan) and “Scotland Can” (the current Scottish Greens slogan) both obviously share an appreciation of capability and flourishing.

So I suggest if we still really want an independent Scotland, these two parties should decide to start building a Yes culture again. Others, from other parties in Holyrood, could eventually join in, of course. But right over there, the Greens are ready, numerous enough, and waiting.

Pat Kane is a musician and writer (www.patkane.today)