I was of the view, in 2014, that we were living in the optimum conditions for a successful Yes vote in the independence referendum.

The Conservatives were in government at Westminster and their power was clearly waxing (and so it proved as they won a further three elections), but they remained deeply unpopular in Scotland. The SNP, meanwhile, was broadly seen as a competent government at Holyrood, and it had momentum. In a relatively short space of time – three years – then First Minister Alex Salmond had taken the independence movement from little over one-quarter of popular support to the brink.

And, yet, no. They lost.

In the final analysis, that loss can probably be put down to their failure to convince a tranche of largely centrist, largely apolitical voters that the devil they knew was inferior, and that they should take a chance on the devil they didn’t. Those voters – with an eye on Scotland's relative economic weakness – did exactly as the pro-UK campaign asked them to do, and said No Thanks.

The 10 years since the referendum have not been sanguine for the independence movement. Yes, the proportion of the electorate who say they would vote Yes has remained in the mid-to-high forties, but the underlying weaknesses, far from being confronted, have been cemented. Far from placing a central focus on prosperity, growth and national wealth, as those potential No-to-Yes switchers want, the SNP Government spent a decade largely rejecting those concepts. Growth and wealth took a back seat in a political outlook dominated by the insular, unrealistic and rather naive view that high........

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