THE SNP conference will begin the post-mortem this Friday. What happened at the election is too big to ignore. Things won’t get better of their own accord. We need to put them right. Hopefully, we can have an honest and candid discussion.

We need to tread a line between indulging in fractious and divisive acrimony and feeling that any criticism and self-reflection weaken us further.

This is possible. We can have a robust and serious debate for which we will be the stronger. But we will need to engage with each other with civility and respect. And to accept that no-one is blameless.

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There is much to discuss and there is no one reason for the worst electoral setback in the party’s history. But some things are easier to reset than others.

We can improve our performance in government. We can develop policy and relate it better to the here and now. We can, with a will, change our organisation.

The hardest part is agreeing a strategic assessment of where we are now and what we need to do to achieve our central aim of leading this country to self-government.

This is the most important thing we need to fix, because it is central to winning back the support and participation of those who are already convinced of the merits of the case for independence but refused to vote for it on July 4.

To do this we need to go back to first principles. The people who live in this country have the right to decide how they are governed and what happens here. This centuries old notion of self-determination underpinned the Claim of Right for Scotland in 1989.

That document, signed by all political parties bar the Tories, provided the ideological backcloth for the campaign for a Scottish Parliament.

The right of people in Scotland to decide how they are governed was also recognised by the Cameron UK Government when they agreed to the 2014 referendum. Indeed, following the election of a majority in the Scottish Parliament committed to giving people a choice on their future, there was no suggestion that the UK should do anything other than facilitate it.

And for 15 hours on September 18 that year the people held their sovereignty in their own hands.

That was then. The situation now is vastly different. The policy of the UK government has since 2014 been to deny the right of the people to choose how they are governed, even when they elect a majority of representatives demanding that choice.

The UK Supreme Court determined that under existing constitutional law (principally the 1998 Scotland Act) the UK has every right to deny that claim and the Scottish Government no power to press it.

Moreover, a majority of people in Scotland have effectively just consented to that interpretation by voting for parties who also now deny that right.

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This is the situation we need to change. Some argue that if the right is really a right then we exercise it anyway and simply ignore the Supreme Court and the UK Government. The Scottish Government should simply pass a bill to organise a referendum.

If prevented from doing so by whatever measure then the next election should be fought as a de-facto referendum and if won, Scotland’s independence proclaimed.

I understand why people argue this. Indeed, I have an emotional attraction to it myself. But it won’t work. The first problem is that the right to self-determination is held by the people, not the party, not the government. And the people are very much not on board. It is not what they voted for in 2021, and definitely not in 2024.

But even if we the SNP were to win a majority to declare independence in 2026, the immediate question is us and whose army. Let us not pretend that the agencies of the British state will acquiesce in our enthusiasm. They will not.

And they will use the full might of that state to block, and criminalise, our attempts to change it, including the suspension of Holyrood and the imposition of direct rule.

Some argue that if we do not reject the authority of the UK in these matters that we are accepting it. That is just not true. It is possible to acknowledge a reality and still wish to change it.

There is a way to achieve self-government by popular consent even if the UK Government is hostile to the objective. It means we agree that our central objective is to assert the Claim of Right and that therefore our principal demand is to amend the 1998 Act to remove the reservation of the constitution to the UK Parliament.

Amongst other things this is what we should present to the electorate in 2026. If they give us a mandate, we should then build a two-year civic campaign to support the Scottish government when it presses that case on the UK.

This is the first stage in a timeline that with a fair wind would take us to a referendum in the early 30s. And to be clear, if a majority are elected in 2026 denying the Claim of Right, it will take even longer. No quick fixes. No just one more heave. Serious, determined, patient work.