AT a time when independence has become a majority view in Scotland, it is probably a good time to point out that there is no need at all for the independence movement to be sitting around passively through this moment. If you don’t believe me, join me in taking a little look at Wales.

Right now in Wales, its independence movement is in first gear and doing very impressive work which is going to mark an epochal step forward in the independence debate in that nation. It is exactly the same kind of work we need to be doing in Scotland.

Late last year the leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, set up a commission to look at the case for Welsh independence – it was reported in The National. I’m limited in what I can tell you just now because I was invited to be an adviser to the commission and so while I know its content it won’t be published until late September.

But I firmly believe that when it is published it will mark a watershed in Wales. Independence supporters there have struggled to get much of the population to see Welsh independence as a real and immediate option rather than a romantic dream.

I first met Adam a couple of years ago and it was that which dominated the conversation; what is it that happened in Scotland that moved the debate from a “future-tense notion” to something that felt like a “present-tense option”. Of course Wales doesn’t have the context of an official referendum campaign to kick-start that shift, so what else could they do?

It won’t surprise many of you to know that I gave him a copy of Common Weal’s How To Start A New Country and repeated to him something I’ve argued in these pages a number of times – that nothing gives people a focus on an issue quite like there being a solid plan to talk about.

I was then invited to Swansea in October last year to talk to a meeting at the Plaid Cymru conference which was set up by the party leadership to explore the strategies for changing opinions on Welsh independence. I was invited because of the extensive public attitude research we did with the Scottish Independence Convention.

But the really important thing that came out of that wonderful week in Wales (I had such a good time...) was the Plaid Cymru leader explicitly promising that he understood the importance of a broad-based movement and was determined that it wouldn’t be too dominated by political parties and Plaid wouldn’t try to control it.

So while the commission was set up by the party and is mostly made up of party members, it has a wide engagement strategy and is not only a creature of the leadership.

I can’t tell you how crucial this is, and it explains why there is no need for an independence movement to be paralysed by a crisis like Covid. The key is to draw on all your resources and not just your parliamentary ones. Frankly while the current crisis is on a different scale, parliaments are constantly facing crises – it was Brexit until it was Covid and it’ll be the economy after this.

It means that Plaid Cymru and its leader have had no problem in stepping up and being a first-rate opposition throughout the Covid crisis while the movement has been able also to continue its crucial work uninterrupted.

I saw the first draft of the final report a couple of weeks ago and (without giving anything away) it does two crucial things. First, it takes head-on big issues and tries to address them. In Wales the biggest issue is the “fiscal gap”, the sense that Wales can’t afford to be its own country.

The commission is taking this seriously and trying to find ways to show people a reassuring path. We are well aware of the weaknesses and gaps in the case in Scotland and while those are different than in Wales, there is nothing stopping us doing the same thing.

The second thing it does is some serious and rigorous public attitude research to inform a campaign. In Scotland the independence movement is obsessed with opinion polls, but our fascination really only extends to one question – are you there yet?.

We tend to fetishise every poll that suggests a few more people are “there” – but that’s not the right question. The question a professional political strategist asks is – why are you NOT

there yet?.

(For example, the available evidence strongly suggests that the popular interpretation of who is currently switching to independence is wrong. People think the group shifting now are “centrists”, but the evidence I’ve seen strongly suggests that they are much more accurately “nervous social democrats worried about public services”.)

YOU will probably be aware of my long-standing view of the Growth Commission but whether you agreed then or not, everyone can now see that we need to start over with the case for independence – had Covid hit an independent Scotland without a currency or central bank we’d have been in very, very deep trouble, unable to borrow or print money.

Everyone up to the First Minister accepts we need to rebuild the case. But while Wales has been using this time to take a leap forward, Scotland has stood still – or more accurately slipped backwards in terms of preparedness.

I write all of this for one simple reason: many times in The National I have read comments or letters from readers saying “but what are we supposed to do – we’d be punished for campaigning for independence during Covid”.

I know these comments are well meaning. But they reflect a view that is very harmful to the cause of Scottish independence – that if a handful of people are busy with a virus crisis there is no remaining talent in the independence movement capable of doing anything else.

It’s not correct, and not by a long shot. A broad-based commission (please can we never again form independence policy by asking one man to write it in secret) working on a bullet-proof case for independence, preparing real and proper strategies for when we are able to campaign again and building the infrastructure to nail that campaign when we can would be a watershed moment.

If our leaders don’t trust the movement, if they need to control every outcome, then yes, moving forward during a crisis is impossible – but as we’ve seen in recent years that also means elections, run-of-the-mill crises and busy parliamentary agendas also paralyse us.

It pains me that in the last six years I’ve had much more chance to input into the future of Welsh independence than I have for Scottish independence. But it isn’t too late.

If we can be a broad movement again, trust each other and work together, if we could only learn from the Welsh (who, ironically, are doing this because they came up to learn from Scotland), then we need no longer be paralysed – Covid or no Covid.