For 10 years we’ve all been stuck with a single strategy for independence. Let Robin McAlpine tell you what can work instead.
Here is the path that successful big ideas take. First they are impossible, then they are fringe, then they are minority, then they become mainstream, then they become a settled will, then they become legislation, and then they become reality.
Sometimes they go backwards (support for Scottish independence was the settled will of the public in 1708...) but they rarely skip steps.
And we have already taken the last major step prior to achieving a settled will. It was the task of the SNP to bring independence into the mainstream where people could see it and would have to talk about it and it did that successfully in 2011, a reality which was cemented during the independence referendum.
Once the next big step is taken, the baton will be handed back to the SNP.
But that next big step is to go from the mainstream to settled will. That is the only thing that will break this logjam.
Without that support, there is no path forward. With that support, all the paths forward open up.
We’ve been kidding ourselves on that we can lift the trophy despite the fact the game is at nil-nil.
We then tried a hopeful “next goal is the winner” approach and asked Westminster to sort us out a simple tiebreaker (which we have always simply assumed we would win).
That’s just nonsense. We gain support or we stay stuck.