A "new start for Scottish independence" is just what some of us have been urging for several years. And it is exactly what the SNP has failed to offer. The voice of dissent from within the party has been so effectively silenced, and from outwith the party so completely ignored, that the SNP leadership has been insulated from all new thinking on the constitutional issue for ten years or more. Their own thinking on the issue hasn't changed in any significant way since 2012. And precious little thinking went into the course of action taken by Alex Salmond.
This is not to denigrate Mr Salmond in any way. He had very little room for manoeuvre and did remarkably well under the conditions then prevailing. But the 2014 referendum and accompanying Yes campaign was very much a cobbled-together affair. It was all far from ideal then but forced on us by circumstances. Which implies that a lot of rethinking was required when it was all over. That never happened.
The SNP has gone into every election since 2014 with the same approach to the constitutional issue as had been thrown together in 2011/2012. They achieved considerable electoral success at first. But that success was bound to tail off as their thinking on the constitutional issue became ever more evidently dated. And as increasing numbers of people became aware of the new thinking developing within the independence movement.
It may not have been apparent at the time, but the SNP has been on course since 2015 for the collapse it has suffered in the 2024 UK general election. The only people who remained oblivious to this looming disaster were the SNP leadership and the wee army of mindless party loyalists who enabled them.
A new start for Scotland's for the struggle to restore Scotland's independence demands a comprehensive reframing of the issue and a total rethink of the campaign. Who believes the current leadership of the SNP is capable of doing this? Not many, I suspect.
Every word of the above applies to Alba Party just as much as the SNP. It applies to the whole of Scotland's political elite. Denise Findlay provides a coldly brutal analysis of Alba Party's election performance (There is no decent place to stand in a massacre) which serves as a perfect companion piece to the article I published yesterday (The SNP’s failure is theirs alone!).
Supposing they are able to read and understand these two articles, maybe those conducting and perpetuating the tribal war between Alba and the SNP will tumble to their own idiocy. Perhaps SNP loyalists and SNP haters alike will realise that they are both right and both wrong. It's possible that they will at last realise they've been on the same side all along. It might dawn on the that the other side isn't the other party but both party leaderships.
The most transformative thing that could happen to the independence movement now would be the members of both SNP and Alba turning on their own leadership and demanding that they either listen - I mean genuinely listen! - to the voice of dissent or make way for people whose minds are open to the new thinking.
Once this happens it will be possible for the Yes movement to unite for the common purpose of forcing the nominally pro-independence parties to adopt a common Manifesto for Independence before the 2026 Scottish Parliament election. That really would be a new start for Scottish independence. And the beginning of the end for the toxic Union!