IF we’d known in January just how dreadful 2020 was going to be, most of us would probably have opted to stay asleep for the next 12 months. It started with the expectation of the Salmond trial, and opponents of independence gloating that it was all over for independence as neither the SNP nor independence movement would survive the trial.

With the UK set to leave the EU at the end of that month, the Conservatives and their allies were confident that the prospect of a hard border with England would mean that the Brexit Scotland was so opposed to would lock Scotland into the UK forever. They excitedly speculated that support for independence was about to fall.

But that’s not how it turned out. The independence movement breathed a sigh of relief when the former first minister walked free from the court with none of the charges against him substantiated, but by the time of the trial a story that would have dominated the headlines in normal times was overshadowed and pushed to the sidelines by the story that has dominated the year, the Covid pandemic. The whole UK was in lockdown, and most people were far too worried about their health, their livelihoods and the social isolation that had become the new normal to care too much about what the Salmond trial told us about in-fighting in the uppermost levels of the SNP.

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Whatever political damage the Salmond story might have done to Nicola Sturgeon was rendered insignificant by the widespread praise she received for her handling of the Scottish Government’s response to the pandemic. Certainly mistakes were made, but the First Minister projected an air of calm and confident empathy which was noticeably lacking from the chaotic and confused bumbling of Boris Johnson and his cronies.

As the magnitude of the crisis started to become understood, opponents of independence confidently predicted that the pandemic would make Scotland realise that in a time of global crisis we needed the UK to protect and defend us.

It didn’t quite work out like that. People saw for themselves the contrast between the First Minister and a British Prime Minister who absented himself from responsibility and who shamefully defended his adviser Dominic Cummings when the latter openly flouted lockdown rules. He then smirked as he insulted everyone’s intelligence by claiming he drove to Barnard Castle with his wife and small child in order to test his eyesight.

It was a lie so egregious that not even Michael Gove, the Cabinet Minister for Slimebucketry, could bring himself to defend it. While all this was going on and the British Government lurched from one episode of foot-in-mouth disease to the next, Johnson’s dithering and indecision resulted in the UK ending up with both the highest death toll in Europe while also suffering the greatest economic damage.

Yet despite this the Conservatives refused to pause their pursuit of the hardest possible Brexit that they could get away with, and introduced the Internal Market Bill which not only threatened to break international law but which also trashed the devolution settlement – a settlement which Johnson described as a disaster and as the greatest mistake of the Blair administration. Senior Conservatives such as Rees-Mogg, the ghost of Christmas in a Victorian workhouse, began to speak openly of the need to undo all of the “constitutional tinkering” of the Labour government.

However, what happened was the opposite to the predictions of British nationalists in January. Support for independence started to rise in polling and soon breached the psychologically important barrier of 50%. It remained above 50% all year, and even reached 58%.

The gloating of British nationalists on social media was replaced by a desperate denialism as poll after poll confirmed that Scotland now backs independence. They told themselves that the polls were meaningless because they had been personally conducted by the SNP’s Angus Robertson who had only asked people in Glasgow with Irish surnames.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party responded by trying to breathe life back into the decayed corpse of the federalism fairy. Keir Starmer came to Scotland, despite lockdown and travel restrictions, to patronise the 40% of Labour voters in Scotland who support independence by referring to them as separatists and telling us Gordon Brown would head a commission to look at that federalism he’d promised to deliver in 2014.

Starmer merely revealed how clueless and out of touch the Labour leadership is on Scotland. But that’s what happens when you base your Scottish policy on the advice you receive from Ian Murray. Starmer’s speech was not only staggeringly Anglocentric, it missed the point. Saying that a supporter of Scottish independence is a separatist is like saying that someone who is emigrating to a new and better life is planning a trip to the airport.

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On a personal level, 2020 has brought more than its fair share of trauma and challenges. In October I suffered a stroke which left me paralysed down the left side of my body and with a disorder of perception in the left side of my visual field. In the bleak first couple of weeks after the stroke I didn’t know if I’d ever walk or work again. The misery was compounded a few days after the stroke by the death of my beloved dug Ginger, the actual not-so-wee ginger dug.

But I was saved from a deep dark pit of despair by an incredible outpouring of love and support from the independence movement and from everyone at this wonderful newspaper, who rallied to my side to ensure that I could get a new home suited to my reduced mobility. It gave me the emotional strength and determination to power through the difficult and demanding work of rehabilitation and physiotherapy.

There is still a long way to go but I’ve made a far better recovery than I could have hoped for at this early stage. I can even get about indoors without the walking stick, and with further therapy there is a good prospect of even better recovery.

Every step I take is a testament to the love and support of the independence movement. I will forever be in its debt.

Next year will be critical for Scotland, with the all-important Holyrood election in May. We are set for a show-down between a weak and vacillating Boris Johnson and a Scotland which is increasingly determined to pursue independence.

It’s a campaign I am looking forward to with relish – because we are going to win. And I am equally determined to play a full and active role in it. 2021 will be Scotland’s year.