SNP must ease off the reins and widen the discussion if we are to win

In my book, our future has never been a matter for m’learned friends, though ­ultimately, it will require skilled and ­committed negotiators from both London and Edinburgh. For, as must be clear even to the most rabid Unionist, this is not the end of our story, but the end of its over-lengthy beginning.

The idea of a “plebiscite election”, ­initially rejected, now adopted by the ­Scottish ­Government, brings in its wake very many legitimate questions. It’s right that there should be a special conference of SNP members to interrogate the idea and examine how and if it can fly.

Yet it’s also long past time to ­acknowledge that this is no longer just a matter for them. The rallies which post-dated the ­Supreme Court verdict were orchestrated by grassroots activists who put in a serious shift before the FM emerged to talk to the ­Edinburgh gathering.

The SNP, by virtue of their numerical ­superiority and their electoral record, have earned the right to be the lead vehicle along the road to independence. But it has to be a comradely convoy, not an entitled ­procession.

Revolutions never succeed as top-down affairs. They succeed when the poor bloody electoral infantry know in their bones that enough is enough and act accordingly.

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It’s one of the reasons I’ve hae’d ma doots about setting up any new party – the ­political graveyard is littered with them – or for that matter, shoring up the numbers with an over-hasty coalition.

I’m not sure the SNP would have got themselves in such an endless fankle over GRA were it not a basic article of faith with the Greens, some of whom actually think the proposed legislation doesn’t go far enough!

Meanwhile, I’m deeply suspicious of the narrative which has emerged in both the print and electronic media, that ­independence should be safely popped on the back burner until the Scottish ­Government has fixed all that assails us. And be seen to do so competently.

By absolutely no accident, it’s not a ­million miles from the Tory battle cry of “now is not the time”. Trust me, for them, now will ­never be the time. ­Colonial ­governor-general Alister, shortly Lord, Jack let the cat leap from the bag in the Commons when he talked about ­Westminster being “the custodian of the devolution settlement”.

Not a partner in a joint or voluntary ­union; that fairytale is well dead. It’s their bat and their ba’, and, as he once also inelegantly observed, we just have to “suck it up”.

When he sinks into richly deserved political oblivion after the next general election, he will nevertheless be able to pop his well-heeled bahookie on the red benches of that other raging ­anachronism, the House of Lords. No matter who was PM, through it all, Alister kept his focus firmly on keeping his job. Blessed are the brown-nosers, for they will always inherit an earthly sinecure.

The problem as I see it is not that the Scottish Government has failed to focus on the “day job”; it’s that the day job is sometimes so all-consuming that there’s little time left over for indy activism.

The ferry debacle and the knock-on ­effect on our island communities has been a bourach right enough. Yet a small-scale one compared to the billions the long-delayed London Crossrail cost, or the billions being poured into the black hole of HS2 or Sizewell.

Show us you can govern, and ­govern well, and the prize shall be yours is the seductive mood music being played by the faux fairweather friends of ­independence. Played by those who would cut their tongues out rather than admit that Scotland’s government, in a bad light, is three times as progressive as the neanderthal wing of the Conservative Party.

If you want an example of incompetent government and full-throated ­capitalism, look no further than the collapse of ­Carillion, one of the Conservatives’ most favoured contractors.

When it went bust in 2018 with debts of £7bn, 3000 direct employees lost their jobs, whilst chaos reigned in everything from major construction projects to school meals and hospital cleaning, such was the spread of its contracted tentacles. All part of the private sector good, public services bad philosophy of consecutive Tory administrations.

When the solid matter hits the fan, chancellors like Rishi Sunak can print enough money to paper over very large cracks, an avenue closed to subservient governments like ours, obliged by law to balance its books, accept annual pocket money and have minimal access to ­borrowing.

That’s why independence is not a ­distraction – it’s an escape tunnel from the shambles down south. From mini-budgets to Brexit, these guys have served up serial disasters of which we are ­collateral damage.

The real day job should be finding a way to uncouple ourselves from this ­unlovely shower and its taste for casual ­corruption. That its Scottish underlings should have the nerve to lecture us on good governance is beyond arrogant. ­Better together – not!

Planning this escape route will not be simple. The SNP, I’m guessing, will revert to “both votes SNP” in a bid to get the outright majority they missed by one seat last time around. Scottish Labour are already saying that the only way to ensure a Tory-free Scotland is to go back to nanny and vote for them.

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They are hard at work punting the ­latest upcoming tablets of constitutional stone from Gordon Brown, probably mini federalism 32.0. It’s a very auld sang and one not being sung by Keir Starmer, who, wrapped in many Union flags, could not be clearer that he wants no truck with a Free Scotland.

I don’t doubt GB is sincere in his ­prescription. I don’t doubt it will be chucked in the nearest bin post-election.

If anyone out there thinks that the way for Scotland to be able to choose its own future lies in a particularly ­unsavoury form of internecine warfare, then I ­suggest they check their history books.

And that goes for the Government as well as its more intractable and vocal ­critics. Division is a one-way ticket to ­independence doom.

ONE of the many ways in which this constitutional wran­gling has distorted normal political discourse is that it often fails to look at what the politics of a post-independence landscape might look like.

It will result in a changed Scottish ­National Party. If they are smart enough, it should result in free-standing Labour, Tory and LibDem Scottish parties. They too would benefit from a London divorce. The Greens already have their divorce from colleagues in England and Wales, ­although you will be less than gobsmacked to learn that stemmed from a trans row.

What we all have to recognise is that if we want to avoid the debate becoming an, ahem, de facto Groundhog Day, we have to do some serious scenario planning. Some of these hard yards have already been trodden by pro-independence think tanks like Believe In Scotland and Common Weal.

They must not be closed off from ­discussions on how we move forward. Nor must the many Yes Hubs who came out in the rain in their hundreds to call for basic democracy to be respected last Thursday.

Let’s use their powerful energy to fuel the next steps. One caller to Radio Scotland opined that if Yes won a plebiscite ­election and still got a dizzie, then we would be left with “the square root of hee haw”.

He has a point.