The notion of political parties working together or forming electoral pacts is clearly nonsensical. Urging parties to 'unite for independence' is just one of those things people say when they want to sound mature and wise and reasonable. On hearing it said, other fantasists will nod sagely - if automatons can be sage. But for all the urging and nodded agreement, the great coming together never actually comes about. For the very simple and glaringly obvious reason that this is just not how political parties operate in the real world.
The reason there are different political parties is that the people who form and join them find it impossible to work together. If they could work together, they would all be in the one party. Urging them to work together is therefore much like commanding the tides. And every bit as likely to succeed.
The reality is that the parties would have to set aside too much in order to work together. So much that they would not carry all the membership with them. The very act of uniting would provoke further division. We can be sure of this because it is not only policy and position differences that keep the parties apart. The differences may be ideological, in which case the disagreements are likely to be so fundamental as to permit no compromise.
More important in practice, however, are the irreconcilable ego clashes and irremediable personal animosities that roil beneath the surface. These more than anything else make electoral pacts far to fragile to survive more than momentarily amid the rough and tumble of real-world politics.
If your 'plan' for restoring Scotland's independence relies on pro-independence parties working together, it is doomed to fail. We may assume with a very high degree of confidence that such unity is never going to happen. And that it wouldn't long survive even if it did happen.
So, why do people persist in urging something which for all practical purposes may be regarded as an impossibility? As I say, it might be no more than a desire to appear wise and reasonable. But it may also be that the people who seek this kind of unity genuinely believe it to be possible. And that is a problem for the independence movement. Because so long as there is a widespread belief that political parties can work together for the sake of Scotland's cause, this will be an impediment to recognition of a more realistic solution.
Political parties won't work together if doing so involves sacrificing their individual identities. Which is what necessarily happens when you try to combine them within a common identity. Inevitably, that common identity will be predominantly that of the strongest individual identity. Others will consider that they are - to a greater or lesser extent - losing their own identity and/or being too closely identified with an agenda that does not align with their own.
The kind of working together being urged can be visualised as a group of people all trying to hold hands with each other. Clearly, this is just not possible. What that group can do, however, is all lay hold of the same thing. They can combine in the sense of each linking to the same idea without linking to one another at some cost to their distinct identities.
For the pro-independence parties, the thing that each can link to is obviously the idea of restoring Scotland's independence - or ending the Union. Imagine it as a group of people from rival Christian sects who would never all join the one church but who will gladly all place their right hand on the same Bible in order to swear an oath. Now imagine that instead of a Bible, there is a #ManifestoForIndependence. A single commitment to an agreed process for restoring independence that each can place their right hand upon and so achieve unity of purpose whilst remaing separate in every other sense.
Instead of a form of unity with requires a single candidate trying to represent numerous different parties, have a common #ManifestoForIndependence to which all the different parties can commit. That way, a vote for any of those parties is incontestably a vote for that single manifesto commitment while simultaneously being a vote for the party’s policies and positions. Everybody wins!
Importantly, a vote for any of these parties is not a vote for independence per se. It is a vote for the process set out in the #ManifestoForIndependence. A process leading to the restoration of independence. A de facto referendum will not stand as the formal exercise by the people of Scotland of our right of self-determination. The process as I envisage it would focus on the right of self-determination so as to make the constitutional issue a human rights issue. A process known as #ScottishUDI.
It is upto the people to come together for independence and vote for the Scottish parliamentary party designed to implement independence. As you say Peter, King Canut failed to rule the parliamentary parties are not going to unite. The recent split of the SNP from the Greens demonstrated that eventual failure.
While the people are sovereign, they, unfortunately, belong to different parties, so believing that it is their right to tell the different political parties to join forces in the name of independence. However, there are many different groups of sovereign people, from the unemployed to business owners and from the services to the trade unions etc.etc.
All have different values concerning the independent state of Scotland. All of which might be represented in a national convention on the subject of independence. Concluding in the positive which a Scottish government would not be able to refuse. Thereby using the political powers to implement a national demand.