Since what feels like the dawn of time, the constitution has utterly dominated Scottish politics.

It electrified the first years of Tony Blair’s government. The sense then that Scotland had been denied its rightful destiny – Winnie Ewing famously saying the parliament was recovening after a 300-year adjournment – was powerful and persuasive.

That feeling was instantly appropriated by the SNP who injected it with steroids and focused it on dissatisfaction with the union itself. By painting devolution as a staging post, not our true nature which could only be satisfied by total separation, Alex Salmond split the voting public in two, restructuring Scotland’s politics.

The parties have been defined as either pro- or anti-independence ever since. Constitutional preference decided election after election…until now.

Read More:

Hardly anyone mentions independence nowadays. Those awkward political conversations it used to cause are now about trans rights or Nigel Farage. The scunner factor and different forms of identity politics are taking over. That has obvious implications for the next Scottish election.

Polling numbers are looking bleak for the main traditional parties. The SNP look likely to emerge as a reduced version of the largest party, having lost their swagger and dominance.

Labour are straining under the weight of voter disappointment and on a bad day could conceivably come third. The Scottish system was designed to encourage........

© Herald Scotland