Around and around we go!

I am a Scottish nationalist. For me, every democratic event in Scotland is—or should be—to a greater or lesser extent about moving towards the ultimate goal of restoring this nation’s independence. The election in which the people of Scotland are voting today could and should have been a giant step in that direction. It won’t be. There is no win for Scotland’s cause in the 2026 Scottish general election.

I will feel no great disappointment when the dust settles over the course of the next few days and the realisation dawns that Scottish nationalists have nothing to look forward to but another five years of querulous inaction from an SNP Scottish Government while what used to be the independence movement tears itself into ever smaller and more widely dispersed fragments in a storm of recriminations.

Others will feel disappointment when they see that the SNP leadership has nothing up its sleeve. I will not. There will be no morning-after crash for me because, for me, the election was lost last October at the SNP conference, where the delegates had the chance to return the party to its role as the party of independence, and they blew it. They had a clear choice between party and cause, and they chose the former. They chose loyalty to the party leadership over progress for Scotland’s cause. From that moment, any hope that the election might trigger a process leading to a proper constitutional referendum and independence began to fade at a daily accelerating pace.

It was always the case that the SNP was going to come out of this election still the dominant force in Scottish politics. Therefore, it was always the case that if the SNP was not committed to making the election a catalyst for action on the constitutional issue, it wasn’t going to happen. It isn’t going to happen. I knew last October that as far as Scotland’s cause is concerned, this election was a write-off. So, I will not be disappointed.

Even after the fateful developments at the SNP conference, there was a way the situation could have been turned around. If Alba Party had adopted a more robust, radical approach to the constitutional issue and been rewarded with an upturn in the polls, it was possible that the SNP leadership might have been sufficiently concerned about their jobs to rethink their ‘strategy’. But the Alba Party leadership lacked the imagination and the courage to mount a serious challenge to the SNP, and we all know what happened next.

Even with Alba Party dead, there was still a sliver of hope for Scotland’s cause. If another party had stepped up to take on the role that Alba Party had refused, there was the very remote possibility that it could have enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls, such as might scare the SNP leadership into adjusting its priorities. That didn’t happen either. Something latterly calling itself the Alliance to Liberate Scotland (AtLS) emerged, and this could have been the radical alternative to the hyper-cautious SNP. It was perfectly placed to do so. It was a new party, but especially following the demise of Alba Party, it had some big names. Being new, it had a blank sheet on which to write its manifesto. As a no-hoper fringe party, it had the advantage of being able to say pretty much anything. It could have gone into the election contest with a distinct, bold message for pro-independence voters. That didn’t happen.

AtLS ran a truly awful campaign. Its main message, drowning out everything else, was an effort to browbeat voters into giving them their regional vote. They managed to weave the word ‘independence’ into a message that was otherwise entirely a demand that people vote tactically so the AtLS could get a few seats, perhaps displacing a couple of Unionists. The way their message came across was as a vaunting sense of entitlement to votes. It was as if they felt they didn’t have to earn those votes, and it was for those not voting for them to explain behaviour portrayed as at best stupid and at worst traitorous.

There was—and still is—a huge audience for a ‘hard’ message on the constitutional issue. Instead, AtLS gave them a message about electoral arithmetic. That audience overlapped another big slice of the pro-independence electorate, which has come to distrust, if not detest, the Scottish Green Party (SGP). At the same time, the SGP was being presented as the ‘natural’ home for pro-independence votes on the regional ballot. Again, a bold, unflinching message on the constitutional issue would have been likely to tip into the AtLS pot the votes of those who would otherwise have held their nose and voted SGP.

AtLS could have saved the election for Scotland’s cause. Instead, they chose an election campaign strategy that was informed not by the imperative of restoring Scotland’s independence, but by the attractions of elected office. In that sense, the AtLS approach matched that of the SNP. For all of the nominally pro-independence parties and candidates, independence was reduced to an electioneering slogan and nothing more.

It is clear that there were a number of points at which the election could have been made to work for Scotland’s cause. It is just as clear that all of these opportunities were squandered—sacrificed on the altar of personal ambition, partisan advantage, or just plain stupidity.

Will lessons be learned? Past experience bids me doubt it. Right now, I’m asking myself what we would be doing if the lessons were learned. My expectation is that the SNP and the rest of the independence industry will switch more or less immediately to campaigning for the next UK general election, which could be any time in the next couple of years. John Swinney, Keith Brown, Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, Lesley Riddoch, and all the other weel-kent faces of the independence movement will do some quick revisions of the speeches and articles they’ve used prior to every election for the past eleven or twelve years. The carousel shall turn, with the familiar parade of painted horses under the glare and glitter of the same coloured lights as the same tunes blare from the same tinny speakers.

Unless something quite dramatic happens after this election, the constitutional carousel will turn until it falls apart.