SOMETIMES – and by that, I mean all the time – my columns for The National are gloomy. I write about the searing injustice being inflicted on people by the Tories because it maddens me as much now as it did when I started campaigning for independence in 2012.

But I’m getting negativity fatigue. I know I’m not alone, and I know it’s not a new thing to feel. We are surrounded by and bombarded with endless bad news.

Ever since Elon Musk bought it, even the place where most of the bad news circulates – Twitter – has itself become a never-ending cycle of depressing news and stupidity.

Feeling the way I do got me thinking about 2014 a lot and the campaign for independence. Imperfect though it was, it was completely invigorating because the Yes campaign was focused on a positive case.

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The positive case for independence was what excited people who had never even registered to vote before to become political activists. I met Labour voters on the doorsteps who had vowed they would never vote again after the Blair years and the Iraq War broke their trust in politics completely that were inspired to vote Yes.

The campaign inspired art and unique new campaign strategies. People were so inspired they took the policy-making partially out of the hands of the old politicians and gave it to young people with ideas that were fresh and new. It was a hopeful campaign, where the vast majority simply wanted the chance to build a better country without awaiting permission from voters in a different country.

There was, of course, negativity. Inside the Yes movement, people had arguments about the best options for the future. People argued about currency unions and other issues but ultimately there was an understanding that the only way we get people to vote for drastic change is for them to have genuine hope that that change would be for the better.

Since 2014, talk about independence has focused on the negative. It’s understandable. Every single year since 2014, things have got worse – 2015 gave us the Tory majority at Westminster; 2016 brought us Brexit and Trump; and 2017 through to 2019 were the Theresa May years which were, simply, a disaster.

That was followed by Johnson, Covid, Partygate, Wallpapergate, several thousand Cabinet resignations, Liz Truss, the mini-Budget that almost destroyed pensions and now there’s Sunak and Gavin Williamson. This column could have been about Gavin Williamson and how MPs treat Westminster like a posh private school but the thought of writing that column just filled me with dread.

Everything I mentioned about after the May years is also accompanied by this weird fear that every commentator and politician from England has about admitting that Brexit was a massive mistake, the consequences of which hang over our lives like a dark cloud.

In independence campaigning, there is absolutely a place for discussing the negatives. Negatives about the Union didn’t do so well in 2014 because the things we were talking about were predictions.

WE would say: “the Tories will pull Scotland out of the EU and make Boris Johnson prime minister against our will” and the No camp would say: “naw they’ll no” and that was that.

Before Brexit and Trump, it was easy to claim that such statements were absurd. Now, we don’t need to say: “this bad thing will happen” because the bad things are currently happening. We can’t get lost in it, though.

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We can’t just focus on what is wrong with the UK political system – we have to remember the positive alternative is far more enticing.

The chance of having a better country excites people even now. We can have a country where our politicians are elected by proportional representation, where we enjoy all the benefits of European Union membership, and where we don’t call refugees invaders.

To get that, all we have to do is convince some of our neighbours that it’s worth going for. We do not need to spend all of our time amplifying the problems with the UK system, they are plain for everyone to see now.

We do need to spend more time reminding people that Scotland can and will be a much better place instead.