In the months after the 2014 independence referendum, despite having lost by a double-digit margin and despite the resignation of the totemic Alex Salmond, the mood music in Scottish politics made it feel like the independence movement and the SNP had won. Or at least, like the SNP had.

Momentum was certainly with them. Yes Scotland and most of the campaign groups under that umbrella dissolved, but within a month of the referendum, the SNP’s membership had surged from 20,000 to 80,000.

That figure had reached 84,000 by the time Nicola Sturgeon became the party’s leader and passed 100,000 before the 2015 general election – at which many of the SNP’s new MPs had been independence campaigners who began that campaign outwith the SNP. In essence, the SNP rapidly absorbed the Yes movement. The movement had become the party.

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While that movement and its support among the public was too small to win the referendum, it was comfortably large enough to secure the past decade of SNP hegemony in Scottish politics. Facing a divided opposition, it delivered a succession of stunning election victories for the SNP, including the largest share of the popular vote in a general election in Scotland since 1955, record constituency vote shares in the 2016 and 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, and a record share of first preference votes in the 2022 local elections.

In doing so, it kept independence on the political agenda long after the referendum and injected new energy into the independence campaign after the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of........

© Herald Scotland