WHEN political opponents would cancel your right to reasonably promote your cause rather than engage honestly then you know you’re winning the argument. In recent months, some siren Unionist voices have resorted to desperate measures not merely to undermine the cause of Scottish independence but actively to thwart preparations for its implementation.

Ian Murray, Scotland’s lone Labour MP, was appalled by the revelation that 11 civil servants had been detailed to work on a prospectus for independence. So exercised was he that he wrote a bizarre letter to the head of the UK civil service, Simon Case, calling on him to “investigate” this development and then “ultimately reverse” the decision.

No-one seems to have told Murray that you can’t have a proper investigation when you’ve already pre-ordained its outcome. Perhaps he was simply taking his lead from Sir Keir Starmer, who has been deploying such totalitarianism in purging the UK Labour Party of actual Socialists.

Murray wrote: “Many would consider this is a deeply inappropriate use of public funds at any time but not least while Scotland is still in the midst of a pandemic when energy bills are rising and families’ household budgets are squeezed.”

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Of course, in the event of Scotland gaining its independence, Murray and his ilk would be among the first to condemn the SNP if it turned out that they hadn’t been planning for the event. Edinburgh is jumping with civil servants. It’s become one of Scotland’s boom sectors in the devolution era. The cost of detaching 11 out of several hundred to conduct some preparatory groundwork for the most epochal event in modern Scottish history pales in comparison to the potential costs of failing to do so.

This week an experienced Union-facing commentator, Stephen Daisley, even ventured to suggest that all matters pertaining to future referendums should be left exclusively to the whims of the UK Government. Daisley is a gifted writer and a former colleague I hold in high affection but he seemed to be having a wee moment.

“It’s time to toss independence into a locked box and bury it six feet deep,” he said. When a journalist seeks to shut down debate and political engagement in such a way you begin to wonder what they ever thought journalism was all about.

I tend to recoil from using the phrase “attack on democracy” when writing about politics. Too often it’s deployed to disparage what are merely vivid statements of sincerely-held political belief. Attacks on democracy occur when sections of the electorate are actively prevented from participating in the process of electing people to represent them. Black people, the Irish and women have all known what it is to experience this.

Yet what Murray and Daisley are proposing is something sinister that goes beyond reasonable and rational support for maintaining the constitutional status quo. Since 2014 and the first referendum, 10 elections in Scotland covering every political jurisdiction have returned comfortable victories for the main party of independence.

Earlier this month, internal research by the Labour Party in Scotland confirmed what we all knew anyway: that a significant proportion of Labour supporters – more than 30% – either back independence or believe that a case has been made to hold a second referendum. It’s this, I believe, what has caused Murray and others to press the panic button.

As Labour’s sole Scottish representative at Westminster, Murray knows his party’s failure to engage seriously on independence has reduced it to a spectral entity in public life. Anas Sarwar seems finally to have realised this too, lamenting the “hollowed out” state of the party that was bequeathed to him.

YET, as one of the most influential figures in Scottish Labour over the past 10 years, Sarwar has been partly responsible for this. It’s arrived at this barren place because its reluctance to construct anything original or progressive on the constitution has rendered it obsolete.

There’s space within Scottish Unionism to have a grown-up conversation about the country’s constitutional future. It’s possible in this place to pledge support for the Union but also to acknowledge that there now exists a mandate for a second referendum. Many more people now support independence than in 2014. Many others believe that 10 electoral victories earns you the right to have another crack at it.

Labour politicians such as Monica Lennon and Neil Findlay recognise this, too, and have adopted a mature attitude to the prevailing currents in Scottish politics. By daring to venture such views though, they have been traduced and faced intimidation from within their own party. Much of it orchestrated by those close to Murray and Sarwar.

Even an ultra-Unionist such as the former Conservative frontbencher at Holyrood Adam Tomkins acknowledges such. Tomkins is a professor in public law at Glasgow University and an expert in the turbid waters of constitutional relationships. He eviscerated Murray’s position.

“Muscular Unionism,” he tweeted “was stupid, self-defeating and rightly abandoned when Whitehall flirted with it last year. It’s equally stupid and self-defeating when pushed by folk who should know better, such as Ian Murray MP.”

If Murray’s Unionism is of the “muscular” variety then that which wants independence tossed into a locked box and buried “six feet deep” must be on steroids.

Some senior figures in the SNP, though, are going to have to do something more than simply bleat about all of this.

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Ian Blackford’s recent intervention on post-independence pension provision appeared to represent a dramatic shift in the SNP’s position from that which was in the 2014 White Paper. I’d feel much more comfortable about this if it came as a result of several years of research and calculations as well as adult conversations with London civil servants.

Some pro-independence commentators seem to have trouble with the concept of holding an elected government to account and think their role is to join its fan club. Yet it’s surely reasonable to ask the party about its workings these last eight years if it really is serious about seeking a referendum in 2023.

The sight of three prominent SNP MPs sitting round a table in Ukraine promoting the agenda of the Nato military alliance was perhaps the most absurd image of the year thus far. Their job is to advance the cause of Scottish independence, not to dress up in cowboy outfits and make believe they’re serious international players.

As extreme Unionism flexes its muscles on independence it seems reasonable to ask if some in the SNP actually have any of their own.