A decade of hope and despair

Ten years ago today, between the hours of 7am and 10pm, absolute sovereign power lay in the hands of the Scottish people. A small majority decided not to keep it.

I voted for Scottish independence, together with so many other old and new Scots. After our sovereignty had been given away, Scotland got hit by Brexit, and all the hope and optimism of yon summer of independence melted away.

I’ve collected some of my blog posts from the past decade below. Some of them are still relevant, and others document what was happening at the time.

Just before the independence referendum, I wrote three blog posts that I think might be worth rereading: Why I’ll be voting Yes on Thursday, Letter from a Yes future and Letter from a No future.

Soon after the loss, I started looking at the options for growing the SNP. For instance, in “Which Westminster seats can the SNP realistically win?” (5/10/14) I wrote this: “This means that according to uniform swing, the SNP stands to win 24 seats, but if we can convince the voters to vote like they did in 2011, the SNP will get no less than 45 seats, and if we can replicate the referendum result, a total of 56 seats is possible.” Of course, in May the following year, the SNP won 56 seats. I also wrote “Can the SNP realistically take East Renfrewshire?“, which I happen to know helped convince Kirsten Oswald to stand in that seat.

I then wrote a series of indyref postmortems: (1) “What went wrong in Edinburgh and the North East?“, (2) “We need to talk about Yes Scotland“, (3) “Why were EU citizens ignored?“, (4) “Postal voting considered harmful” and (5) “Critical mass“.

For a while, I then mainly reacted to current events, but it might be good to mention “The Independence Institute” and “Lest the momentum fades“.

Then Brexit happened. The next morning, I was distraught, but Nicola Sturgeon was a ray of sunshine: “Thanks, Nicola!” Especially because she spoke directly to us EU citizens: “You remain welcome here. Your contribution is valued”, and because she started talking about a new independence referendum: “The option of a second [Scottish] referendum must be on the table, and it is.”

Soon afterwards, I started analysing the Indyref/Brexit landscape in Scotland, introducing the concept of four tribes: “The four tribes of Scotland“, “More about the four tribes of Scotland“, “The Yellow Tribe of Scotland“, “The Blue Tribe of Scotland“, “The Green Tribe of Scotland“, and “The Red Tribe of Scotland“. Nothing came of this, but it’s interesting to look back on.

I also started worrying about independistas calling for a delay, e.g., “Is Scotland going for the worst possible solution?“, “Fisking Alex Neil’s article” and “Delaying the new independence referendum will help the Unionists“.

At the same time, I could see that Brexit was showing signs of turning out much worse than originally expected, as in “Brexit means hard Brexit, so Scotland must leave the UK” (2/10/16) and “Brexit shock therapy“, and I starting thinking Scotland needed to leave ASAP: “People and companies are starting to leave the UK – we need Indyref2 soon!“.

Time was passing, and I was starting to get worried we wouldn’t get a new independence referendum anytime soon (e.g., “Brexit is like boiling a frog alive“), so I started thinking about leaving Scotland, starting with “Should we leave or remain?“.

I was also getting angry with the SNP and with Nicola Sturgeon: “Yes, the SNP’s dithering is making me angry!” and “The art of the possible“. Over time, this turned into despair (“Despair“, 31/10/18), and I got more scathing about Nicola Sturgeon’s ability to achieve anything: “Negotiation Skills 101“.

By early 2019, I was concluding that “We’re about to miss the boat“, and on 5th March 2019, I announced I was “Launching my own lifeboat – Scotland won’t escape soon enough“, by moving back to Denmark with my Scottish wife and our three youngest kids.

That didn’t mean giving up on Scottish independence or on reversing Brexit, but of course my perspective changed. For instance, it became clearer to me that Scotland is only really seen as a country in Scotland (“Schrödinger’s country and Schrödinger’s mandate“).

It was also becoming obvious that the SNP were getting too comfortable with power (“The endless SNP cycle“) as I started worrying that “Devolution has become a breeding ground for political mediocrity“.

More recently, I’ve started thinking more about how to force Westminster to listen to Scotland, in blog posts such as “How can Scotland rise up and not be ignored?” and “Cells – a new way forward?“. However, I don’t feel most Scots are currently engaged in such questions.

I find it hard to see a good way forward at the moment. Labour won’t reverse Brexit (at least not while Starmer is their leader), and the SNP are not doing anything to escape the UK. I believe the best hope at the moment is for Irish Reunification to happen (although it seems unlikely to happen this year in spite of this being predicted by Star Trek); that might throw all the cards up in the air again, and then who knows where they’ll land.

In the meantime, the kids who were 9, 11 and 13 when we left Scotland are now 14, 16 and 18, and they’re living in a small independent country that isn’t falling apart (no potholes and a great NHS), where you get a government grant for going to university, and where they have the freedom to study or work anywhere in the EU. We all miss Scotland, though, and that won’t ever change.