Ruth Wishart: The independence movement is at a crossroads. We must seize the moment

He said it had been “a rewarding ­experience” advising the former FM and the ­wider government. He added that he had also been “particularly fortunate to work closely with Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, both of whom I could always turn to for friendship and wise counsel”.

And he concluded that he was both “very disappointed and dismayed” at the ­“prominent narrative of opposing camps” which didn’t reflect his own experience.

His dismay and disappointment are widespread. The hostility from ­Unionists and their unfailing use of the words ­separatist and separation is neither new nor ­unexpected from those determined to remain under the somewhat threadbare blanket of UK control. Though their voices will certainly be turned up to full volume in the next few weeks. (I read one blog which advised readers not to concern themselves with getting Swinney or permanent ­secretary Leslie ­Evans since the only target which mattered was Sturgeon.)

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The hostility of those purporting to be independence supporters is something else again. It’s not just that the level of vitriol poured over the current First Minister is both vicious and sustained, but that there seems no recognition that they are actively helping to burn down the house they long claimed they wanted to build.

Both the current and former FM gave remarkably assured performances to the committee interrogating the reasons the taxpayer footed the bill for an appalling (and unlawful) error of judgement in the pursuit of the new harassment policy. Yet it would be idle to pretend Linda Fabiani was the only onlooker rolling her eyes at some of the answers.

However let me enter a note of ­realpolitik into a debate which is in ­danger of ­consuming the very raison d’etre of the independence movement. There was an opinion poll published in the last few days which suggested that Boris Johnson’s ­administration is now cantering ahead of Keir Starmer’s Labour, doubtless getting a shot in the arm from the vaccination ­programme.

Even on level pegging on the polls, ­Labour doesn’t have so much a mountain to climb as a matched set of Munros. And if the task seem herculean in England, the latest Scottish Labour leader is still, by his own admission, laying the foundation stones of a possible recovery sometime in the future.

So this is not about “wheesht for indy” or any of the other slick cliches ­littering social media. This is about taking a long hard look at Scotland’s future at a ­moment of maximum danger for her ­prospects of self determination.

The facts are these. It has been a long, difficult slog to get the indy movement to this tipping point. And yes, I get how ­impatient people have become, because I’m in the “if not now, when?” camp too.

Yet I also know that the stark choice is between voting the only way which can progress independence, or ­allowing one of the most malign, ­incompetent ­administrations ever elected to ­Westminster to continue to fashion ­Scotland in its own appalling image.

Consider the events of the last few days. The UK Government, which has ­squandered billions on half baked ­pandemic projects, has just cut overseas aid to Yemen and condemned hundreds of thousands of children to lingering death by starvation. It has simultaneously refused to cut arms sales to the principal architects of the conflict, endlessly ­reciting weasel words about conforming to the sales regulations.

The UK Government has just chucked £370k at the former permanent secretary at the Home Office to buy his silence over the Home Secretary’s serial bullying of staff. She was, you may remember, found guilty of breaching the ministerial code. Which apparently only matters if you’re Scottish.

The UK Government which has found billions for Covid contracts which have come to nought, can only find a 1% pay rise for those at the NHS front line ­actually saving lives. Including that of the PM. Cheaper to clap for five minutes at the door.

This is nothing short of scandalous, as is the fact that the Prime Minister was ­assuring the Commons that all these dodgy contracts could be freely examined at the very moment his lawyers were in court trying to explain why 100 had still to be published. The PM has now been found guilty of misleading parliament. Which apparently only matters if you’re Scottish.

Over 90% of those which have been, were so late that the High Court in ­London found the English Health ­Secretary had acted unlawfully. Which apparently only matters if you’re Scottish.

I COULD go on, but everyone is well aware that the current Prime Minister is not so much economical with the actualite ­(copyright the late Alan Clark) as guilty of issuing porkies pretty well any time his lips move. His colleagues know this. When Boris Johnson segued into the top job thanks to a few thousand members of the Tory Party, those who cautioned most urgently against his promotion were those who had worked with him, or for whom he had worked.

Yet this man and his shoddy cabinet are apparently a better bet for Scotland for however many more years and terms than her own government, voted for by her own electorate.

Our current government can be justly accused of many missteps, and flaws. I challenge any one of the keyboard ­warriors trying to decapitate it to explain how it is somehow worse than ­Westminster.

I would argue that both the current and former First Ministers of Scotland are head and shoulders above any of the ­current UK cabinet members. In the light of the last fortnight I can’t in all honesty say the same about some of the ­committee which found itself in the full glare of the TV lights.

Yet these are things we can fix for ­ourselves. Every party in Scotland should take a long hard look at who it puts at the top of its list and why. It would help ­nobody if we re-opened the old sterile ­debate about the comparative worth of list versus constituency Holyrood MSP’s. However it would help everybody if ­everyone had an overdue spring clean of their list ­contenders.

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Similarly the next government will not be a re-tread. The retiral of many senior figures has assured that, and looking around the chamber I can see several ­people able to step up.

And if, as predicted, the next government is a Nationalist one, then it will have been left in very little doubt that the time for “ca’ canny” being the rallying call of choice is long past.

WE are at a crossroads we may never be able to visit again. Not in my lifetime anyway. We can seize the moment, grasp the chance to break free, knuckle down to the hard but rewarding work of building for independence, or we can allow those “well balanced” folk with chips on both shoulders to condemn us to yet more Tory governments.

We can use the many talents of the wider Yes movement to shape and influence an unfettered Holyrood government, or we can confirm that we are too small minded, too thrawn, and too self indulgent to make the final push.

We have lived through a huge drama and much turbulence. One where nightmares have not been the sole prerogative of the principal cast members.

The nightmare shared by hundred of thousands of Scots is that cometh the hour, cometh that ignoble Scottish tradition of taking aim at our own feet.