Tommy Sheppard: The Yes movement needs to get its mojo back

In the south Edinburgh Yes campaign centre the mood was buoyant. We knew by lunchtime the turnout was unprecedented. By teatime, people were coming back saying it was pointless knocking up as everyone had voted.

During those 15 hours of voting the people of Scotland were determining their own future. It really did lie in their hands. We felt as if we were standing on the brink of something momentous.

Just after 11pm, I got to Dynamic Earth where Yes campaigners were assembling to watch the count. On arrival, the mood was sober. Exit polls were saying we had lost.

As the Clackmannanshire result was read out, disbelief turned to despair. Soon afterwards, I went home. My mate and I drowned our sorrows with a bottle of 12-year-old malt as the dawn brought no change.

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In the 48 hours that followed, a strange sort of telepathic solidarity emerged in the despond of defeat. Tens of thousands joined the SNP.

I was one. We knew that this was not over.

Ten years on, it’s a good point to assess what sort of fist we’ve made of going forward. In fairness something like half of that time has been disrupted by Brexit and Covid, with the execution and aftermath of both derailing and delaying progress.

That said, the report card for the Yes movement is not great. Three things stand out for me. First, the dial has not really been shifted since 2014 with support for independence more or less where it was then.

OK, I know that for periods Yes has been in the lead, even getting over 50% during lockdown.

But for most of the time we’ve been in the minority – and that’s where we are now.

Some will contend that this in itself is a result. After all, these figures have been maintained with little active campaigning and with a hostile and belligerent Unionist opposition. Well maybe.

An independence supporter walks up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh

But is it not strange that given Brexit, war, cost of living crises and the palpable corruption of the British state, more people have not embraced the alternative of independence?

For me this statis suggests that for much of the last decade we have been talking to ourselves.

Time and energy have been expended in mobilising our existing supporters rather than going after new ones.

Even with Brexit we missed the opportunity. Yes, some new people switched to our cause, distraught at the prospect of leaving the European Union, and convinced that independence offered a way back.

But the manner in which we pegged the case for a second referendum on the changed circumstances of Brexit failed to convince most Europhile

No voters and put the backs up of many who just thought we were bad losers. I wonder what would have happened if we had focused on developing a vision for Scotland in Europe rather than becoming fixated on process.

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I’m not blaming anyone. I’m as guilty as anyone. I made the speeches, wrote the articles, did the interviews, all claiming the question needed putting again since the goalposts had changed. I’m just saying it didn’t work. And those who do not learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

The second big change in the last 10 years is that the character of support for independence has changed. By polling day in 2014, the ranks of the solid quarter of the population who have always supported Scotland’s independence were swelled by hundreds of thousands of people attracted by the possibility of change it offered. It was new and exciting. And they were enthusiastic.

It doesn’t feel new any more.

Now many of the people who tell pollsters they support independence believe it to be desirable but unattainable. They are forlorn and sullen. They blame the SNP and others for not delivering and have lapsed into a fatalism which renders them inactive.

More than ever this movement needs to get its mojo back.

The third – and related – development of the last 10 years has been the deployment of an assertive Unionism determined to reject the very notion that Scotland could be an independent country.

The assault has been both legislative and political. The post-referendum 2016 Scotland Act devolved responsibility without means. The Internal Market Act and others severely constrained the operation of Holyrood. The increasing exercise of Section 35 orders made it clear who is boss.

Perhaps most of all, the Supreme Court ruled that the reserved matters in the 1998 Act meant not only that Holyrood did not have responsibility for the constitution, but that it could not even consult its electorate on changing it.

That has been used politically not just to deny mandates but to create the impression that there is no longer any point in seeking or obtaining them. The right of self-determination inherent in that vote 10 years ago is now denied.

So, it’s not been a great decade. But we are still here. And we know what needs to be done. A reimagining of what independence looks like, a new route map to allow people to choose it, and most of all a reassertion of the Claim of Right of the people of Scotland to determine the form or government they want. The next 10 years starts now.