Saturday’s march for independence was noticeably thinner than previous ones. Perhaps even the SNP's diehard supporters aren’t being kidded by old slogans, says Feature Writer of the Year Kevin McKenna

No preparations for a Holyrood election are complete without the SNP suddenly rediscovering their desire for an independent Scotland after a long period of silence.

I recall a former SNP spin doctor telling me that he actively discouraged MPs and MSPs discussing independence during term-time. He felt too few of them possessed the intellect to discuss it under pressure. In the white heat of an independence campaign, how would the SNP manage to convince a majority that they could be entrusted with all the levers of independent statehood when they’ve failed so lamentably with the limited devolved powers at their current disposal?

Even so, you’d still expect them to have produced some workings prior to this election, which Mr Swinney insists can be the first step towards being independent by 2030.

The First Minister has come over all Braveheart in recent weeks with talk of independence. Yet, he appears not to have given any thought to persuading a sitting UK Government to grant him even another referendum. Nor does he appear to have looked around him at what’s been happening beyond these shores. The world in 2026 is a far different place to what it was in 2014.

Then, there was a chance of persuading other nations to the cause of Scottish independence. The world liked what it saw of Scotland. Alex Salmond and several on his front bench were respected at Westminster and spoke with confident authority when they were on the global stage. They wanted to welcome an independent Scotland back into Europe.

Their most implacable opponents were be-clowning themselves, like Lord George Robertson, who floated the idea – to great ridicule – that Scottish independence was a threat to global peace. To listen to them, you were expecting the international aid agencies to divert resources from Haiti and Somalia to deal with those starving, independent Scots.

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The world has changed since then, though. The global economy is facing its biggest challenge since the Suez crisis. There are two wars raging right now which have the capacity to catch fire with each other and bring dozens of countries into the conflagration. The UK is straining every sinew not to become involved, but may soon have no choice in the matter.

Many ordinary people despairing at Donald Trump’s chaotic war in Iran nonetheless want reassurance that Britain is capable of defending itself if the time comes. They will not be placing their trust in people who can neither build a passenger ferry to order nor make it run on time.

Even if the SNP had demonstrated any capability in managing the limited devolved affairs of Scotland, they would still have struggled to convince anyone that this was the right time to discuss independence. The SNP’s stewardship though, has not been agile: it’s failed by every metric.

The big march for independence on Saturday was threadbare compared to those that followed in the wake of 2014. One of the SNP's more excitable MPs reckoned there were half a million there. No wonder Mr Salmond's party spin doctors weren't keen on the foot soldiers talking too much about numbers.

One prominent Yes supporter on the march said that life in Scotland right now was like living in a Unionist Laager. For those not familiar with that term it's South African in origin and describes a defensive camp drained by circling wagons. It’s most often deployed in a military context. This chap is an affluent party glove-puppet who’s future-proofed against the risk he’s asking others to take. Twelve years after the referendum, this infantile nonsense is all the SNP can muster.

The last thing John Swinney wants is a referendum any time soon. He knows that it would be like putting your under-18s into a Champions League match. They would be eviscerated within days. In 2014, the SNP and the wider Yes movement had a formidable team of top-tier performers led by Alex Salmond and his deputy Nicola Sturgeon before she became ruinously obsessed with gender ideology.

They were reinforced by intelligent, well-motivated people from all political, cultural and faith backgrounds who sensed Scotland's moment had come at a time when the UK political establishment seemed set upon a downward spiral towards the hard right.

This was before the hounding of women such as Joanna Cherry and Kate Forbes, two politicians who could actually debate the economics of independence without sounding as though they were speaking a foreign language. Those who sought to construct a solid strategy in the wake of Brexit, like Chris McEleny and Angus MacNeil, were jeered by the SNP’s young Matalan army when they tried to float a referendum Plan B.

The SNP group at Westminster had a curious way of “standing up for Scotland”. They specialised in gaslighting an entire nation. The message that came across was that working-class Scots were racist, bigoted, unclean savages who couldn’t be trusted to bring up their own children; eat the right food; drink responsibly and place rubbish in the right bins. That’s some message to be sending out to potential investors and tax-paying workers.

In recent weeks though, we have seen hooliganism and lawlessness at the heart of the SNP. As we learn more about the Jordan Linden sex abuse scandal, it’s becoming clear that the party leadership ignored years of complaints about criminal behaviour.

‘In 2014, the SNP and the wider Yes movement had a formidable team of top-tier performers led by Alex Salmond and his deputy Nicola Sturgeon’ (Image: PA)

They’re ignoring the Supreme Court judgment on the primacy of biological sex and stand accused of fostering a culture of secrecy by Scotland’s Information Tsar. They rule by redaction.

They have no achievements in government even partially to mitigate this. In any future independence campaign, we’d be entitled to ask why, after 19 years in power, Scotland is in a worse place than when they first took office.

They know though, that in a quick, six-week campaign against a Labour Party with the albatross of Keir Starmer around its neck and Reform UK, the gift that keeps on giving to the SNP it’s easier to prevail. You can conceal your own sins when you’re facing a party of political gargoyles, led by quite the most foolish and inept politician ever to have been given custodianship of a political outfit in Scotland.

The SNP aren’t fighting for independence in May’s elections; they’re simply desperate to keep a well-oiled gravy train tolling along.

Kevin McKenna is Scotland's Feature Writer of the Year

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