IN an interview with the Conservative broadcaster Iain Dale at the Edinburgh Festival, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon expressed her belief that Yes will comfortably win the vote on independence which is coming, whether that's in the form of a referendum or a UK General Election which will be a de facto referendum in Scotland. 

There is little doubt that she is correct, which is why the anti-independence and British nationalist parties are desperately doing what they can to prevent a vote from taking place.

The opponents of independence have seen the Conservatives destroy most of the strongest arguments against Scottish independence which the Better Together campaign deployed in 2014. Opposition to independence no longer guarantees Scotland's membership of the European Union, indeed independence is now the only realistic option in order to get Scotland back into the EU or the single market and customs union. 

Likewise, Better Together Mk II will be unable to dangle the carrot of greater devolution for Scotland in return for a No vote. The Conservatives have consistently run a coach and horses through the existing devolution settlement and any new Vow will struggle to be believed by even the most credulous Reporting Scotland presenter. For all Labour's attempts to breathe life into the corpse of the Federalism Fairy, it is not merely deceased, it has been cremated and its ashes scattered at the shrine to Brexit where Keir Starmer worships these days.

But more than any of this, what has been destroyed is the reputation of the UK for competent and moderate government. No one will now take seriously assertions from opponents of independence that Scotland depends upon Westminster to guarantee democracy and standards of decency in government.  We have seen a succession of Conservative prime ministers, each of whom has been worse than the one before, and incredibly it is entirely possible that the next one could be even worse than Boris Johnson, who was thought to have plumbed a depth that was uniquely bad. 

2014 seems like a different era. Back then many people in Scotland were prepared to believe British nationalist myths about the UK and to trust in the promises that the Better Together parties made to Scotland. That trust has now gone.

However, perhaps the biggest change to the advantage of the Yes side is that opponents of independence can no longer plausibly frame the independence debate as a debate between “nationalism” on the one hand, with all the negative associations and baggage that word implies, and on the other hand cuddly non-nationalist “unionists”.

Despite the desperate attempts of certain Conservative and especially Labour supporters on social media, this framing will no longer fly. The Conservatives have turned into a blatantly English nationalist party while Labour shamelessly panders to the worst Brexiter instincts of the Conservatives as it ditches any attempt to respond to Scotland's concerns and chases votes in Brexit-supporting constituencies in northern England.

The case for the Union is incomparably weaker than it was in 2014. We now live in a UK which effectively denies that Scotland has the ability to decide its own future for itself, even as it sticks to the increasingly threadbare myth that this supposed union is a partnership of nations enjoying equal status and respect.

The independence campaign is crucially able to offer something that opponents of independence cannot – a vision of a Scotland in which the government is responsible and answerable to the people of this country. All that the opponents of independence can offer is a future in which democratic safeguards are increasingly hollowed out and where the people of Scotland must sit passively by while their future is determined by right-wing Anglo-British nationalist politicians who can barely disguise their contempt for Scotland while they neuter the courts and our rights of protest and preside over crumbling public services as they ensure the enrichment of their cronies.

And to make a dreadful situation even worse, these Anglo-British nationalists are not just beyond being held to account, they are also corrupt and grossly incompetent. We are now at the point where the only meaningful difference between fascists and the right-wing of the Conservative Party is that your actual fascists can make the trains run on time.

And that is why Nicola Sturgeon is right to be confident that Scotland will vote Yes.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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