Belief is not enough!

Scotland's cause needs purpose, direction and leadership.

Had anyone been keeping a tally of pleas fae weel kent faces for the independence movement to "unite for common cause", I suspect they'd be well on the way to six figures by now. It certainly seems that not a day passes without at least one such plea being reported in the pages of The National. If we were to add to that tally all the parroting of these calls in below-the-line comments and on social media, we'd be looking at seven figures. It's incessant!

It's also self-evidently ineffective. If these plaintive urgings to 'unite for indy' were being heard and acted upon, they'd surely be redundant by now. Like the strategy of selling independence like a holiday destination, the 'unity' schtick has been running for ten years or more. There is nothing to suggest that either of these things has had the slightest impact. Despite the 'glossy brochure' approach to campaigning, support for independence has flatlined since 2014. Despite ceaseless efforts to persuade independence activists that we should "accept the need to come together in common cause", that unity for a common cause seems more elusive than ever.

At what point do the likes of Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp start to appreciate the fact that, sincere and well-intentioned as their efforts may be, their methods are just not working? Is there a point at which they start to ask themselves why their style of campaigning is ineffectual and why their calls for unity are unheeded? Will they ever start to wonder if maybe they should try something different? Or will they persist in the unshakeable belief that they know what's best and the blame for ineffectiveness and disunity lies with those pesky activists who aren't waving the glossy brochures vigorously enough and decline to be subsumed into a homogenous mass of drones dutifully echoing some dull corporate message?

I strongly suspect the latter is more likely. I should retain a copy of this comment as I fear it will be just as relevant next year. And the year after that.

I really can't imagine Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp acknowledging the need to drastically revise his thinking on the constitutional issue. For example, I see him still flogging the folly of using the 2026 Holyrood election as a de facto referendum on independence.

I propose we campaign together now, as we did in 2014, to stand under one commitment, Independence for Scotland, to secure a majority of votes in Holyrood 2026 as the settled will of the people for Scotland to become independent . . .

Like all too many others, he has arrived at the superficially appealing and thus saleable de facto referendum idea and stopped thinking at that point. He never gets to the bit where he realises that you can't have a meaningful referendum on something that is undeliverable. You can take a vote on gold-plating the Forth Railway Bridge. But the vote is meaningless because what you're voting for can't be done. Similarly, you can ask people to vote for independence in an election pretending to be a referendum, but it's an utterly pointless exercise because there's no mechanism by which to give effect to a majority vote for independence. Nothing can come of it. Nothing other than more disappointment and frustration for those who've been gullible enough to suppose independence would ensue from their vote. As if we needed more disappointment and frustration!

Think it through and it becomes clear that the issue of legislative competence must be addressed before there can be a vote on the constitutional question. For there to be a meaningful referendum on independence, the Scottish Parliament must have the capacity to deliver major constitutional change. Currently, the Scottish Parliament doesn't have that capacity. Although power over Scotland's constitution rightfully belongs with the parliament elected by Scotland's people, that power has been usurped by the British coloniser and is being withheld. It continues to be withheld because our pusillanimous and treacherous political elite accede to the British state's asserted authority to 'reserve' that power to itself.

Once you've thought it through this far, it becomes plain that, if it is to be meaningful at all, a 2026 de facto referendum must seek the people's mandate for the Scottish Parliament to repossess its rightful legislative competence in all matters relating to Scotland's constitution. Only once this has been done can there be a proper constitutional referendum.

So far, so obvious! But here's the rub! Point out the obvious rather than applauding the folly and you are immediately condemned for 'creating division'. So, not only does the folly persist, but a division is manufactured where none would exist but for the folly. Dissent from a failed and failing strategy is labelled disloyalty and the cause of disunity. Therefore, there can only be a failed and failing strategy and disunity. It cannot be otherwise because those who cling to the ineffective approach make it impossible for it to be any other way.

Similarly, the Gordon MacIntyre-Kemps of the independence movement's 'old guard' continue the endless pleas for us to "unite for common cause" without troubling to examine a plea which clearly isn't having any effect. Were they to do so, they might realise that the plea to unite behind independence changes nothing because it is a wish for something that already exists. We are united for a common cause! We cannot be other than united because it is a common cause! That's what is meant by common cause. A cause held in common. Or a cause for which people are united.

There is no division on the issue of independence among independence supporters. Independence is the same thing no matter which of us is supporting it. We are united by definition! Calls to "come together in common cause" have no effect because we're already together in terms of the common cause. What is lacking is not a common cause, but a common purpose! We lack a common purpose because there is no purpose for us to share!

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp talks of a "return to the positivity of the independence movement of 2014". Like John Swinney, he is trying to invoke the 'spirit of 2014'. But it isn't 2014. It's 2024. The world has moved on. Some of us have moved on with it and recognise that even if it were possible to revive that old spirit, it wouldn't be appropriate in circumstances as they are now. The time for a joyful, happy-clappy, positivity-obsessed attitude is long gone. We are into the down and dirty phase of the liberation struggle and it's time people like Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp and John Swinney woke the f*** up to this fact.

But there is a tragic failure of comprehension in this as well. Whatever unity the Yes movement enjoyed in the campaign for the 2014 referendum it was made possible by the fact that we had a common purpose. It wasn't commitment to the cause that made that extraordinary unity of the early Yes movement possible. Most of us had long been committed to that cause. What made the unity possible was the fact that we had a referendum. We had a purpose. We were all working towards the same thing and that thing wasn't just the ephemeral idea of independence but the solidity of a task with a deadline. A purpose!

The purpose was lost when the deadline was reached and the task completed - successfully or not. Since campaigning for the 2014 referendum ended, the independence movement has had no purpose. There has been no defined point for us to work towards. No event with an outcome that is of considerable significance to Scotland's cause - as we supposed was the case with the 2014 referendum. That is what is missing! So long as it is missing, all these calls for unity are otiose to the point of being inane.

Give us a purpose to unite around and we will have the unity of purpose that animates and energises passive commitment to a cause. Show us a process that leads to restored independence answering all the 'what next?' and 'what if?' questions at every stage, and the independence movement with unite for the purpose of pursuing that process.