ONE of the key tasks of the organisation set up by Angus Robertson will be to examine the changing attitudes among certain groups of people who tended to vote No in 2014.

The former SNP deputy leader explained that Progress Scotland, the body he has launched with pollster Mark Diffley, wants to find out to why older voters, EU nationals and voters who were born in the rest of the UK, but who have settled in Scotland, were less inclined to vote Yes and what arguments might persuade them to change their minds.

“Amongst certain groups of voters ... Yes did not perform well enough last time around. That was the case with European voters, that was the case with older voters and that was the case with people born elsewhere in the UK, largely in England.

“Those were groups where the argument last time didn’t work well enough and with all of these people we need to understand where they are now, and what it is that might persuade them to change next time around,” he told the BBC’s Sunday Politics Scotland.

“I think one of the interesting things is it can’t be the same case as was run in the last referendum given everything that’s changed, so we also need to understand the changed circumstances to be able to make an effective case possible.”

Robertson explained polling had suggested that while around 8% of No voters had moved to Yes since 2014, around 5% had moved from Yes to No, and that Progress Scotland would also carry out work to find out why this latter shift had taken place in a bid to persuade them back to the independence case.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon backs launch of Progress Scotland initiative

Progress Scotland’s launch comes at a critical time for the independence movement.

With some clarity due in the coming weeks on the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, Sturgeon has said she will set out her thinking on the timing of a second independence referendum “soon”.

SNP activists will expect some movement when they gather on April 27 and April 28 in Edinburgh for the party’s spring conference. It will be the first – since the Brexit vote – where the UK is no longer an EU member despite Scotland voting by 62% to stay; that’s if Brexit does go ahead as planned on March 29.

But by the end of April the Brexit fog should have lifted to some extent anyway. Voters should know if the UK has left the EU, and if it has crashed out without a deal or left with May’s deal, perhaps with a tweak to the political declaration (the non legally binding part of the agreement she struck with the EU).

The situation will allow Robertson and other organisations in the Yes movement to refocus their arguments.

Issues that will need to be updated in the new political landscape will be whether an independent Scotland seeks to rejoin the EU or goes for “the Norway option” of membership of the European Economic Area, a move which would allow it to keep out of the Common Fisheries Policy.

READ MORE: How to support independence organisation Progress Scotland

Currency and trade are also among the policy areas which would need to be revised ahead of a new independence referendum.

But amid the turmoil, there are some signs the mood among voters is shifting. One recent poll found support for independence would rise to 52% under a no-deal Brexit.