Determination: How Scotland Can Become Independent by 2021 by Robin McAlpine - HTML preview

Conclusion: From here to there

If you’re an independence supporter, where is here? It’s 2016. And we lost. Since we lost we have seen the SNP sweep Scotland and the other independence-supporting parties grow stronger. Plus the pro-union parties have become weaker. So far so good.

But that really is as far as we have got. There is no meaningful sense in which we can really talk about an active campaign for independence or a functioning movement for independence. There may be strategies around for how we get independence on our terms, but I’ve certainly not heard them. And from most of what I’ve seen and heard, at the moment the next step seems to look rather too much like a repeat of the last step.

What is definite is that the case that lost last time, the arguments and the content of the messages, have not moved forward at all. We know that the currency question was a major problem for us last time, yet nothing has changed. No work has been done, no discussion has taken place, no ideas have been explored. Little effort has been made to keep the cross-party movement or the grassroots movement together and networked (other than through the efforts of the grassroots themselves). No effort has been made to help that movement to learn and improve. In fact, very little effort has been put into learning lessons from the last time.

If I was to describe what has happened to us since September 18th 2014 I’d probably accept that we’ve grown. But to my eyes it looks that way because we got fatter, not stronger, not faster. In my more pessimistic moments I sometimes think we’ve spent coming on for two years congratulating ourselves. For losing.

OK, I know I have a tendency of seeing work that needs to be done everywhere and I do have a habit of expecting people to get up on their feet and go one more round when perhaps they really do need a wee rest. But even allowing for my industrial-strength Scottish work ethic, who doesn’t feel a little bit of lack of direction from where we are now? Do you really feel that there is a lot of momentum behind us? If the next two years were something like a repeat of the last two years, do you think we’d be further forward or where we are? The main thing to say about where we are is that we are British citizens and our leader is David Cameron.

Where’s there? ‘There’ is an independent Scotland, won with the support of a proportion of the population big enough to mean this deal is built into our nation unequivocally, for ever and without ayes and buts. ‘There’ is a new Scotland set up properly, built properly, serving us properly. Just that.

How do we get from here to there? In this book I have outlined my best thinking. We get our strategy right, focussing specifically on the proportion of the population who are the next most likely people to move from No to Yes. They are not those on high income or of a right-wing perspective but much the same as the people who did vote Yes but who didn’t yet feel confident enough. How do we get them? Make them confident. How do we do that? Work. Work to make sure that we have a much better plan for independence. Do that work now and get it published as a much better prospectus either at the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019. In the meantime, get the movement together and train, learn, get better prepared. At the same time the Scottish Government will have led us through its boldness and its commitment to make Scotland different. Because in 2019 when that prospectus is out there we are going to launch a campaign even more focussed and even more determined than the last time. For two years we are going to make that case to every single person in Scotland.

Because by the end of 2020 we are going to have shifted enough people that support for independence is sitting at 65 per cent consistently for six months. We are going to measure this relentlessly. No guessing. Once we get there we will enter 2021 with a solid plan for using the Scottish Elections to get a non-negotiable mandate for a referendum. We will win that mandate in May 2021 and the mandate will be for a referendum in October 2021. We will win that referendum. And because we have already done the work to prepare for negotiations and to build a new country, we will quickly be ready to be out; to be gone. To be independent.

This is not the only possible plan – but it is at least a plan. It is at least self-determination; a decision to take this issue into our own hands. And not with our fingers crossed. It is a credible, serious and achievable way forward. There is nothing in this plan which we cannot choose to do.

And so I leave you to make up your own mind. Do you agree? Do you have a better idea? I would welcome a debate. Just as long as that debate is over soon and the work begins. But I want to finish with one plea. Don’t believe someone or something is coming to save us. It isn’t. And by all means have faith that someone else has this all in hand and that all you have to do is wait. But please don’t take it for granted. Ask them, push them, demand to know where we go from here.

We get one more chance at this. If we wait a decade none of us can guess where we’ll be. If we lose next time, it’s over. If we cross our fingers we may lose. Or we may never even get a chance to try.

It’s us. It’s only us. And that’s all it’ll take. If we want it.