Is independence simply not going to happen under current SNP leadership?

For me the star of this marathon was the BBC’s political correspondent Nick Eardley, a son of Edinburgh who distinguished himself from his metropolitan colleagues by knowing where everything in Scotland was, at least a little of its political history and how to pronounce it.

He seemed to me to prove beyond doubt that it is far better for the BBC to employ on its northward forays somebody like him, who can tell his Coupar Angus from his Cupar Fife, rather than the usual gaggle of pundits like, say, Nick Robinson, who so audibly loathes the Land of the Mountain and the Flood and the sort of prickly politicians it produces.

Here is a typical sentence from young Nick demonstrating his effortless and concise mastery of a local scene that, even today, might baffle his colleagues in London: “The thought of Alex Salmond back at Holyrood, putting pressure on Nicola Sturgeon to move quicker on independence, a former First Minister watching over his successor’s shoulder and making life difficult, left some [SNP loyalists] worried.

“As it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, that even Mr Salmond himself was going to fail to win a seat on the North East list, many in the SNP breathed a sigh of relief.

“They’re dead,” concluded one source close to Nicola Sturgeon.’

I hope I’m not giving away too much about sharp journalistic practice if I suggest this sentence might hint it was not just “one source close to Nicola” but in fact the First Minister in person that pronounced the death sentence (should this be libellous, I instantly withdraw it).

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Let me stress how we have witnessed events that will, for their intrinsic interest and their human drama, go down in the history books anyway. It is all the more prodigious that they took place against the background of an election campaign in its final, lethal, toxic stages. Remarkably, Nicola emerged almost unscathed, while Alex was fatally struck as the storm raged round him. I’m sure the future will look more kindly on him.

But does this tell us anything useful about the SNP and its future? It has anchored itself firmly in what, according to today’s jargon, is called the progressive side of UK politics, even though the UK is something it wants in principle to leave far behind. It could be that Sturgeon has allowed herself to be drawn further away than is wise from the average mainstream of her party, to the point where some of them wonder if she is still, in her heart of hearts, a genuine supporter of their cause. That was, after all, the whole point of Alba.

Others note that, even after she conquers coronavirus, the stated main aim of her next government will be equality. It might help if she said a little more about what she means by this goal and its practical implications. Most of us would agree that NHS workers have earned a just reward for their efforts over the past year, while others wonder, as a matter of principle, whether the public sector should always be taken at its own valuation. Unfortunately a logical end of this idea appears to be that some persons or groups should be willing to define themselves as lying at the bottom of the scale of worth.

Equality is a sensible principle if we are talking about legal or political rights. We should indeed all be equal before the law and enjoy the same political rights to vote and stand for office. But Nicola goes far beyond this to favour equality of income, above all to win for public sector workers equivalence in pay with the private sector. She takes it for granted that the private sector will be able to cope with higher cash flows. If not, I suppose we must look to the UK Treasury to maintain real living standards. If Scotland walks out from under the jurisdiction of the Treasury – well then, we will have to think of something else.

Nicola has downgraded this humdrum if dubious economic aim in favour of winning final victory over coronavirus. I think she has always enjoyed running a health service best of all, and to have Scotland as in essence one big health service would be fine for her.

Scottish Government, looking for some positives in the pandemic, agreed it could at least be used to promote equality. Poor families, along with people suffering a range of other ailments, were more likely to catch coronavirus in the first place. But they were also the ones with prospects for employment and vulnerability to a range of conditions that were also likely to be affected in the long run, even after the illness itself had been cured.

Maybe this is a route to be followed for victory in the referendum. There should first be an effort to make independence seductive to right-wing voters. All voters on the left who can be attracted would have been attracted already, since the electoral history of devolution to date has largely been a transfer of voters from Labour to SNP. The same route has been followed by the old LibDem vote, which has more or less collapsed.

IN Scotland we were unused to this sort of volatility so let’s take a look at the world’s most successful electoral force, the UK Conservatives. They have a long record of suppressing internal debate till the polls close, to dispel doubts and spare energies. If there are Tories who dissent, they are welcome to leave the party – which saves them the indignity of being expelled.

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But the times are always changing, today faster than in the last century. Under Boris, the Tories have abandoned austerity and embraced excess. Profligacy is not always problem-free either, as shown by the example of Jeremy Corbyn and his political death. Yet the answer is not, as the LibDems are finding out, to have next to no policies at all.

Former Tory voters ready to vote Yes are far more numerous. In the north-east many must have made the transition once before anyway, in those seats which have been marginal as between Tory and SNP, and independent enough of mind to produce liberal swings.

Alex Salmond took care to keep up contacts with business and welcome its interest in his party, introduced as an intriguing novelty on the sluggish Scottish scene. Other parties were dull because they did not dare to deviate from their leaderships in London, whereas the Nats could make up policy as they went along and worry about consistency later.

There is an obvious drawback, that it has left us still a long way from freedom, even after 14 years of SNP power at Holyrood. It has never won over people who sincerely oppose the break-up of the Union (not all of them knaves and fools) and ask awkward questions, to which they seldom get wholly convincing answers. There must be at least a little suspicion that independence may simply be unavailable from the sort of coalition that advocated it up to election day on May 6.