Lest the momentum fades

Yesterday Craig Murray made some important points about the timing of the next independence referendum:

The SNP is full of siren voices arguing that they should enjoy their spoils for a decade or two while maintaining a steady trudge towards independence. They whisper that we have to await a 60% Yes lead in the opinion polls before we try again as another defeat would be disastrous.

But the greater danger is that the momentum fades. You would have to be the greatest optimist in the World to imagine a more favourable conjunction of circumstances for Independence than an extremist Tory government at Westminster, a Labour Party in meltdown, the Liberals almost eliminated and the SNP supreme in Scotland. Plus the residue of the huge momentum of the IndyI campaign, which put on 14 points in 12 months.

This dream conjunction will not last forever. The great danger is letting the moment slip through our fingers.

I think this is a very good point. If we look at the situation in other countries, everything is in a flux at the moment, and people do things they wouldn’t have dreamt of before. Syriza and Podemos wouldn’t have done so well just a few years ago, and closer to home Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t have stood a chance against Miliband five years ago. At the same time, huge numbers of refugees are arriving in Europe and it is not at all certain what that will mean for the future of the EU and our place in the world.

People everywhere are looking for a way out of the current mess. At some point in the future, a solution will be found (let’s just hope it’s a positive solution and not a modern version of the 1930s) and things will settle down again, and by then independence could easily be off the agenda for another generation.

The time to take a leap into the unknown — and declaring independence from the rUK falls into this category no matter how many components of the UK you decide to retain after independence — is during a time of uncertainty.

Nobody knows how long the current situation will last, but I would expect things to calm down within the next decade. In other words, if the next independence referendum doesn’t get called before 2025, there’s a huge risk it will suddenly have to wait another 30 years.

I’m not arguing we should call a new referendum tomorrow. The opinion polls haven’t shifted enough yet, and there needs to be a real, tangible reason to call a referendum. However, time is of the essence.

We need to campaign for independence now as if the second independence referendum had already been called. By campaigning — and yes, that means arranging meetings, marching through Edinburgh, putting Yes stickers everywhere and chapping on doors — we can get to the 60% support for Yes that will convince our most cautious of friends that the time is right to call a second referendum, and at that point winning it will be a mere formality.

(In Craig Murray’s blog post he then goes on to discuss the conditions for a UDI, which I think is perhaps a distraction at this stage. There are times when that might be the best solution, but at the moment we should assume that Westminster won’t fight a Scottish Government that has got the popular mandate to call another referendum. He’s also unhappy that the SNP won’t let him stand as a Holyrood candidate; I appreciate he’s a bit more outspoken that your typical prospective MSP, but I believe “it’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in,” as Lyndon B. Johnson said about somebody completely different, so I hope they’ll reconsider in the future.)