GEORGE Foulkes – what’s he like?

The veteran Unionist and former Labour Cabinet Minister took to Twitter on Tuesday night to observe: “Surprisingly downbeat Yes movement ‘debate’ at Queens Hall tonight in spite of creditable effort by Lesley Riddoch to hype it, with all panellists ruling out an early referendum and implicit criticism of Nicola Sturgeon.”

The tweet was accompanied by a picture of an empty-looking Queen’s Hall balcony.

George.

Lamb.

The National:

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If only I’d known you were on the Big Indy Debate livestream – provided for nowt by Kevin Gibney of Independence Live – I’d have given you a wee shout-out and suggested a contribution to their crowdfunder. Or you could have come along in person to sit on that very empty balcony – reserved for the few folk who couldn’t wear masks. The main auditorium had a socially distanced audience of more than 300 people. Not bad for these wary Covid days.

And downbeat?

The panel was straight-talking, keen to confront difficulty and determined not to indulge in false optimism about the ease of getting a Section 30 order out of Boris Johnson. And yes, they also discussed the desirability of embarking on another campaign with many key questions unresolved and the vision of a different Scotland still missing.

I’d call that mature and honest debate. Try it sometime George – it might be life-changing.

In fact, far from being downbeat, that debate might yet be the night the Yes movement got its mojo back – by rediscovering its sense of mission. Not to keep Lord George amused of an evening.

But to create the template for a new Scotland. To devise and calmly discuss the ways Scotland can do things differently from Westminster – honestly weighing up the costs, difficulties and options like any folk seriously intent on transformational change in a way that seems almost impossible for Nicola Sturgeon.

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That matters because pushing a Yes vote simply to become “Just in Time” Scotland won’t inspire voters, who are suddenly seriously rattled at Britain’s rapid descent into chaos.

In the noughties, revelations of appalling Westminster incompetence emerged only every now and again. The pace quickened over this decade through the phoney ferry contracts, “oven-ready deals” and Irish-border U-turns of Brexit and the crony contracts, cavalier attitudes, delays, deaths and PPE shortages of Covid. Now revelations of appalling mismanagement at Whitehall are coming at us with more ferocity and frequency than an Emma Raducanu serve.

This last week has been extraordinary, even by Boris’s standards.

Thatcher’s privatised energy industry has been shown to be essentially bust, the cost of heating is certain to rise and energy security is non-existent since Britain has preferred to feed reliance on gas for heating (85% against roughly 5% in Norway), importing supplies instead of decarbonising heating as every other northern country has done over the last 50 years.

This terrible week has also exposed our lack of food security – so much relies upon a single American firm’s fertiliser and its CO2 by-product, that Number 10 has had to bribe them to restart production.

Meanwhile the benefit of recent wage rises will soon be wiped out by higher National Insurance payments, energy, food and transport bills and less Universal Credit.

And finally (though it’s only Thursday). confidence in the UK pensions system has been shaken to the core by the Audit Committee’s revelation that pensioners are owed more than £1 billion by the Department of Work and Pensions because of “human errors in an overly complex and outdated system”.

The truth is apparent.

Britain’s marketised, Del Boy economy is on its knees.

To paraphrase Monty Python – if it wasn’t nailed to the perch, held in place by the companies, interest groups, billionaires, investors and employers who benefit, then the unplanned, unfair, unequal Great British status quo would be pushing up the daisies.

We have a just in time Britain led by a seat-of-his-pants premier.

The question is, do we have a just-in-time Scotland too?

Partly – in a devolved set-up that’s inevitable.

So, can independence change that and if so how?

The answer can’t remain a state secret – the route map to reinvigorating Scotland must be spelled out as surely as the route to decarbonising homes and offices.

But currently neither is happening.

Which is why Lord George did get two things right.

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The prevailing view on Tuesday night was indeed that no referendum is likely by 2023.

And all panellists felt that way – Common Weal’s Robin McAlpine, the SSP’s Colin Fox, Scottish Green’s Gillian Mackay, Bella Caledonia editor Mike Small and Women for Indy’s Selma Rahman – not just

the SNP’s Michelle Thomson, who was singled out yesterday by much of the press.

Why the pessimism/realism?

Well, there’s no reason for Boris to concede a Section 30, no real enthusiasm from Nicola Sturgeon about taking an alternative route, no big Yes majority like the polls that scared Number 10 during 2020 – and no plan, big ideas or vision developed and properly embedded in the public’s consciousness about our independent future.

Sure, change is daunting. But

not if it’s explained well. Not if

the status quo’s damaging reality

is staring us all in the face. Not if ideas become the real Scottish currency again.

Politicians don’t usually like worrying voters. And voters generally don’t like being worried.

But we’re all worried anyway – because the chronic incompetence gripping Westminster remains undiagnosed beyond the easy label “Tory”.

We urgently need independence.

But we more urgently need debate, buy-in and voter familiarity with new ideas about how to escape the perks, profiteering, back-handers, outsourcing, outdated energy fixes, and myriad privatised utilities of broken Britain.

We need political diagnosis of Britain’s deep-seated ills, a template for avoiding them and some honesty about the likely difficulties our new country will encounter.

Little of this will come from the SNP – partly because that’s not the way they rock, partly because a government can’t float ideas without becoming inconveniently wedded to them but mostly because the SNP is a political party and a government.

Parties are electoral machines not ideas factories.

Governments cope with the draining realities of the here and now – they rarely look further ahead.

The SNP could share the ideas arena with the public via Citizens Assemblies, support think tanks like Common Weal and encourage or even endorse ideas devised within the Yes movement. The media might take a small interest in big thinking beyond political parties and the Fraser of Allander Institute – aye and pigs might fly.

Regardless, new thinking about the pathways to independence is urgently needed to create optimism, bounce and real strategy before indyref2. How can that happen, unless the Yes movement steps forward to take up the slack?

Watch the Big Indy debate again at www.youtube.com/independencelive