DURING his resignation speech, Humza Yousaf said that "independence was frustratingly close". To be honest, I'm not feeling it. At the moment, it seems a very distant prospect.
In his acceptance speech, John Swinney said that he will "always seek, with respect and courtesy, to persuade people of the case for independence". That's certainly the right tone – but I just have a nagging feeling that at the moment we're missing an important piece of the puzzle.
For two years I ran Yes Scotland's enormously successful digital campaign. I lived and breathed the arguments for independence, day and night. And I've spent the decade since thinking about why we didn't win. I've also been wondering why support for putting Scotland's future in Scotland's hands has not increased more, despite the car crash of Brexit and a smorgasbord of cataclysmic Tory prime ministers most Scots didn't vote for.
My worry is that while we’re busy debating or marching or handing out leaflets at stalls, we’re just fighting the last referendum – the one we didn't win. It sometimes feels like we’re going over the ground we lost on, using the same arguments and making the same points that did not convince voters last time.
This is in no way to suggest a lack of commitment or ability on the part of the people getting out there and doing something. It's just that I think we're missing a valuable piece of information.
It's this: we don't really understand why we lost last time.
That may sound strange. We all have our assumptions about it and there has been a bit of opinion polling carried out that suggests some reasons why Yes lost. But we have never had an in-depth, movement-wide conversation about what went wrong.
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That strikes me as strange. First, as a professional campaigner I'm well used to having no-blame "washups" to work out what's worked and what could have been better. But that never happened with the biggest campaign I've worked on: Yes Scotland.
Second, the power of what we achieved together was based on a network of distributed conversations, so why have we not listened to each other about what could be learned from our defeat?
The strength of the Yes movement in 2014 was based on the fact it was a mass network of allies, rather than a centralised operation. Take the digital campaign which I ran. An advisor to our opponents described it to me as "the most successful social political campaign in Europe to date, and one that gave those of us on the No side nightmares".
That success was not down to strict command and control from HQ but rather because we helped supporters tell their own stories about independence and share our content in their own way – and used our social media heft to promote them.
And it was a great success, roundly beating the No campaign in every metric. Well, apart from the one which mattered.
I'm keen to understand why we lost. And I'm keen to harness the wisdom of the thousands of people who took part in the campaign.
That's why I've launched the Yes We Didnae project (YesWeDidnae.scot) – a mass survey designed to gather the views of volunteers, activists and voters. If independence is about anything, it's about empowering citizens. And that starts with asking them what they think.
I want to know what Yes activists and voters think about why we didn't win in the hope that it will give important pointers on how to win next time. I want to hear from those who knocked doors, delivered leaflets, even just talked to their friends and family (before and since the referendum).
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This isn't about blame or pointing fingers. It's about dispassionately looking at what happened and asking each other what we could have done differently. I believe that if we don't have that conversation we can't properly move the argument forward.
At the moment, I'm just seeking the views of Yessers. If there's enough interest and support, I'll expand the project to seek the views of No voters to see what, if anything, might make them persuadable.
The seeds of future victory lie in the ashes of defeat. But we need to find them.
To help with that, please take the survey at YesWeDidnae.scot.
Stewart Kirkpatrick is a campaign strategist and former head of digital at Yes Scotland.
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