Scotland is different but not completely different, reflecting our existence as a nation and 300-year union.
Scotland has power and agency. Namely if Scottish opinion work out a new independence offer, address the trade-offs, choices and thorny issues, reach out to understand those who voted No and remain unconvinced, and analyse properly why Yes lost in 2014 (which is more than Gordon Brown, ‘the Vow’ and BBC) – a task the SNP willfully refused to do in the past twelve years – then that would be a potential gamechanger.
This would be an act of collective empowerment and agency. If it was combined with a strategy of public engagement and building public support this would emphasise that Scots collectively have the power to shape and make their own future and have decided to be serious about this and do something about it. This is the road not taken since 2014: in part blocked by the SNP, but also by the continual pretence that independence can be attained by the latest ‘mandate’ or ‘one more push’. Such an approach is one of diminishing returns playing to a declining number of the true believers such as the SNP’s 20% of the electorate last week.
What it would do is remove the illusion that all the main barriers to progress on self-government are external – with the consequent depowering of Scots – and do the heavy work on internal issues – practising and advancing a culture of self-determination and taking power and responsibility – which would not only aid independence, but a politics of substance. It would also be helped by having an honest reflection on a politics of timescales – and that independence is not on present circumstances just around the corner. The pretence that it is undertaken by Sturgeon and successive leaders has harmed independence.