WHEN I decided late last week that I would write today about how the upcoming Holyrood election was shaping up to be a choice between Scotland’s future and its past, I never expected that such a perfect example of this dichotomy would suddenly present itself on Friday in the launch of Alex Salmond’s Alba Party.

In just over five weeks, we’ll be heading to the polls, and self-determination appears to remain the defining issue of this election – a promise on the lips of the SNP and Scottish Greens, and a shield in the hands of the Scottish Tories to protect themselves from any real scrutiny over their regressive policies.

In that sense, things are playing out much as they did back in 2016.

Yet, with the official campaign period only just starting, I would argue that the real split among the ranks of Holyrood hopefuls is less about the big constitutional question, and more about whether we want to move forward as a modern nation, or stubbornly dig our heels into a deteriorating past.

It would be hard to look at the current crop of pro-Union parties vying for places in Scotland’s Parliament and not see a deep-seated desire to protect the various imbalances and anachronisms that define the United Kingdom.

Ruth Davidson’s ascension to the House of Lords is a perfect example of Britain’s love for rewarding the failings of the political class with even more power.

As leader of the Scottish Tories, Davidson led the party through defeat after defeat, achieving little in Holyrood. Now she’s sidling off to sit in an archaic institution that makes a mockery of the so-called democracy that independence supporters are supposed to “respect” by getting back in their boxes.

There’s no denying the Union has been good for the Tories. A quick glance at their subsidised lifestyles will confirm that.

However it’s not just the Tories holding on dearly to the past.

Last week, almost every officer of the Glasgow Kelvin Constituency Labour Party stood down after party leadership replaced a candidate for the crime of voicing her opinion that an independence referendum should be held sooner rather than later, in line with what the majority of Scots want.

That was enough for Hollie Cameron to be deselected, against the democratic wishes of her local party membership.

There is no space for debate over the constitutional question from a party that has seen its Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, repeatedly sidelined to make way for Keir Starmer’s pronouncements from on high.

Governance from hundreds of miles away was meant to be a relic of old Britain. Whether that’s living under the boot of Whitehall, or local groups falling foul of Labour’s performative devotion to the Union, both represent the Scotland of pre-devolution – even, it could be argued, pre-referendum – days.

As UK-wide parties, Labour and the Tories come with as much baggage as they could jam on the Caledonian Sleeper for a jaunt across the Border. Both are invested in the backward institutions of the UK, and come pre-programmed with the expected Westminster sensibilities that make meaningful change and collaboration so difficult.

Both relish the braying, oppositional style of debate that’s expected from a parliamentary chamber set up to allow the two ruling parties to scream at each other from across the House. That doesn’t translate so well to the rounded, collaborative set-up of the Holyrood Parliament.

WESTMINSTER’S imported politics are rife across the Unionist parties. The sickening political manoeuvring around the handling of the Salmond inquiry is exactly what I would expect from Westminster – but I would have hoped that Holyrood could have been better than that.

To leak comments shared in confidentiality from women who have already suffered an endless witch-hunt with the aim of scoring some cheap political points is beyond the standards of acceptable behaviour.

The fact that many on the pro-Union side also seem to have quite blatantly decided the fate of Nicola Sturgeon well before she had even presented evidence to the inquiry again reveals that Westminster mindset of opposition for the sake of opposition, and no real interest in justice. That’s the kind of politicking I’d hope we could leave behind as an independent nation, yet it’s precisely the backward and outdated mentality that the red, white and blue of the chamber desperately want to keep us beholden to.

And in that sense, with independence within reach, the upcoming election is as much a vote on the future of Scotland as it is the political make-up of Holyrood.

And into the middle of that, the Alba Party has arrived.

If we want to talk about parties that are emphatically trying to hold on to the past, Salmond’s attempt to return to politics can’t be overlooked.

The party’s car-crash launch, plagued by technical errors and followed up by a serious data breach, could not have looked less like a party representing a modern nation.

The key takeaway from the grilling that followed Salmond’s lacklustre announcement was that the former First Minister appears unwilling to really address or come to terms with his previous behaviour which, while not criminal, was certainly extremely inappropriate.

Salmond’s role in Scotland’s history was an important one. He secured an independence referendum that drastically changed the course of Scotland for the better – but the Scotland that let Salmond flourish was the Scotland of yesterday.

Watching the launch of the Alba Party, I didn’t see anything of what made the independence movement great in 2014 – just a group of people whose relevance has faded and who pine for the glory days of the first referendum.

Whatever his motives, this isn’t about securing a supermajority. Polling clearly indicates that a supermajority for Yes between the SNP and Scottish Greens was already on the cards before anyone had even heard a slew of candidates mispronounce the word Alba.

This election is a choice between the future and the past. Personally, I’m not interested in going backwards.