I WAS a bit dispirited at reading The National on Thursday, for two reasons. Ruth Wishart’s article on Jeane Feeman seemed to argue that government should do the day job, keep a steady course, but it was up to the wider Yes movement to push independence and to speak about the dangers of Brexit, the powers we would have on independence and so on. Lesley Riddoch echoes the sentiment that we can argue independence after Covid. But by then people will be crediting the UK Government with the survival of the economy.

But why the split between government and the Yes movement? Surely the SNP is the political wing of the Yes movement. True, the SNP Government has to act for all Scotland’s people, not just independence supporters, but others in the party are not so constrained. Where is our Minister for Independence? If independence is seen as secondary now, will the electorate see the need for it once the danger is passed?

This is a huge missed opportunity, when Unionist politicians double down at every opportunity to say we would never have survived Covid, never have afforded furlough without the “broad shoulders” of the UK.

The FM has consistently distanced herself from the Yes movement, particularly the marches. Why? The commitment to indyref2 in the next manifesto is welcome, but will it be a detailed commitment or a vague one? Nicola Sturgeon can commit to indyref happening in a certain month and year or within a time frame of four years.

And the FM has still given no indication of how she intends to get around her self-imposed red line of a Section 30 order being required.

If that remains her choice, how does she get round repeated refusals from the UK? The idea that support for independence reaches such a level that the UK cannot continue to refuse is hopeful, at best.

As for not fighting among ourselves, it looks like an attempt to quell reasonable dissent. Historically, splits, even acrimonious splits, have made the SNP what it is today – the 79 Group’s expulsion, the turn towards Europe, the U-turn on Nato.

More modern differences of opinion have softened the SNP’s devotion to the EU and to the Growth Commission. Because of the splits, there is at last now debate about the EU, and real questioning of the right-wing Growth Commission and Economic Advisory Group, although it has been long enough coming.

But they are still not listening on some things – Gender Recognition Act amendments and the ill-thought-out hate crime proposals, but particularly the recent perceived stitch-up by the National Executive Committee. Disquieting legislative proposals and the lack of a road map to indyref2 are what have given rise to new parties like the Independence for Scotland Party, who feel the SNP need to become less authoritarian and more focused on independence.

There have been too many commitments to announcements next month, next conference, after Brexit, when the Brexit deal is done, next election, next year. None happened. Obviously the Covid crisis is central to our lives now, the lives lost, the lives which will implode during the depression to come, the economic devastation to follow.

But rather than seeing independence as of secondary importance, now more than ever we should be telling the electorate clearly that an independent Scotland would have coped better. The furlough scheme is eminently affordable to any independent country with its own central bank and we could keep it going as long as needed, not have to shut it down at the behest of the UK or finance it out of our fixed budget.

Scotland could reform banking and taxation to benefit all of us, except possibly bankers and the super-rich.

How many ordinary people do little but spend their working lives barely surviving, paying back the banks? Debt repayment in our debt-fuelled economy is a drain on the real economy, instead of fuelling it.

We should refocus the economy first by paying well those who in the crisis we discovered we really need – the carers of the sick and disabled, the teachers and teaching assistants, shop workers, delivery drivers. In short, those who in the neoliberal model are nobodies.

The Programme for Government’s Universal Basic Income proposal is welcome, but is it even deliverable under devolution?

Instead of shutting up about independence, we should be doubling down on it as the best political solution for Scotland and presenting bold new ideas to replace the UK economic model.

Julia Pannell

Friockheim