MAYBE it’s just me, but doesn’t the response to the election result in Scotland from the SNP and the wider movement feel a little muted?

Yes, there have been some fairly public spats between leading figures in the party, as the blame game heats up. But outside of that, there has been something of a shrug of the shoulders at what has just happened.

The SNP are down to just nine seats, having lost half a million of their 2019 voters. Not only that, Labour are in confident mood, already charting a course for the 2026 Holyrood election.

Meanwhile, leading figures from Better Together, such as Blair McDougall and Douglas Alexander, are in Parliament and indeed at the heart of government. Keir Starmer obviously has a strategy too when it comes to Scotland, as his quick in-person visits to meet the First Minister John Swinney and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar indicate. And all of this without Labour having altered their position on Scottish self-determination.

READ MORE: John Swinney deserves chance to turn things around for 2026

The truth is, that while the result was on the more disastrous end of the polling projections, it didn’t come as a shock to any discerning observer. The SNP campaign was pretty lacklustre, and the party has lost the army of activists and clarity of message it once had.

That’s what happens when people feel taken for granted – their conference decisions regularly overridden – and when there is so little in the way of both direction and belief. There is a deeper analysis to be conducted here, but that is for another day.

For now, we can lay out the proximate reasons for the poor showing. The high-profile police investigation into party finances – which resulted in the SNP’s former chief executive being charged in connection with embezzlement – damaged trust, while donations dried up. The position on independence lacked both zeal and credibility in the minds of voters.

The churn in leadership and open divisions don’t help either. This list goes on, but it’s safe to say Swinney was never going to be able to turn it around, as I argued in previous columns.

Then there is the response from what remains of a fragmented and demoralised movement, which offered the standard fare. The cause is bigger than any party. The movement must unite. The dream will never die.

Except, for now at least, the dream is dead.

There is no way to a referendum, no political force with enough support in the population to turn an election result into direct negotiations for independence, and no prospectus that offers coherence. Just consider how catastrophic this state of affairs is compared to the promise of the post-2014 surge in political activism around the SNP.

Perhaps it is little wonder, considering the SNP leadership shunned the mass demonstrations which emerged for independence some years ago. How they must now wish they had not so cheaply dislocated the party from its core base of active support.

Despite years of unrivalled dominance in the Scottish Parliament throughout the Sturgeon era, the delivery on policy and transformational reform was absent to any serious extent.

So much could have been achieved, but tangible outcomes for working-class Scots were traded for headline-grabbing and spin. Had there been a solid foundation in this regard, the SNP could have stood on firmer ground even if the party was in a mess over the national question.

Thus we have a combination of factors – declining trust, failures of domestic governance, the loss of activism and funds, the end of the road for the “gold standard” referendum, the coming and going of leaders – which taken together mount up to nothing short of an endemic political crisis.

None of this will be solved with a barnstorming speech at SNP conference, or a hastily brought-together convention of the existing independence groups. In 10 years, it is the same voices and faces that represent the idea of independence.

That is not to deride anyone, but just to point out that even on that basic front, there is little in the way of expansion.

The danger for supporters of Scottish autonomy is that the cause becomes something of a re-enactment society. Even retaining the use of the term “Yes” or “Yesser” is a comforting and familiar throwback with narrowing resonance. Anyone who didn’t take part in 2014 won’t relate to this.

In any event, it makes no sense when a referendum isn’t on the table.

I have been very critical of the SNP leadership throughout the years, but not of those tens of thousands of committed independence campaigners.

The people who march, who resolutely conduct what outreach they can, and who found a sense of agency in 2014. It is those individuals who have been let down by a leadership more concerned with how they are viewed by the political establishment than anyone else.

But among this, the misplaced loyalty, especially to Nicola Sturgeon, blunted the critical and strategic thinking of the movement. When people were told there was a plan, busily taking shape behind the scenes, this was largely accepted.

Perhaps out of desperation, following the No vote, that can be forgiven. What is more difficult to square is the idea that the SNP hierarchy kept the myth going for electoral purposes, while failing to rise to the hopes and demands of the 2014 movement when it came to domestic policy.

So, here we are. A Scotland whose wind resources are sold off at rock-bottom prices to BP and Shell. Where the most right-wing incarnation of Brexit – freeports – have been gladly signed off. And now with a resurgent Labour Party, which opposes Scotland’s “right to decide”.

Ten short years ago this would have been laughed out of the pub had you raised such a prediction. It goes to show that anything can happen in politics, but that it is always worth raising your head above the parapet and telling it like it is.

Only then can there be a process of rebuilding. That is now a decades-long project.