Ten years ago today the people of Scotland went to the polls to decide on the future of their country in the Scottish independence referendum. The historic event - which would have seen Scotland break free from the rest of the UK - took place on 18 September 2014 and saw more than two million people (55.3%) vote No and 1.6 million (44.7%) vote Yes.
Following the defeat, then first minister Alex Salmond stepped down and was replaced by Nicola Sturgeon. Although indyref was touted as a "once in a generation opportunity to follow a different path", dissatisfaction with the result has led to campaigners continually calling for a second vote.
The movement has not stopped over the past decade, with marches continuing to be held up and down the country in support of Scotland leaving the UK.
Alex Salmond's Unwavering Belief in Independence
Back in the early days of the SNP government, former First Minister Alex Salmond claimed he was a leader for all Scots, regardless of their view on the constitution. As SNP leader, Mr Salmond came to power in Holyrood insisting he was as committed to serving the pro-UK majority as he was to advancing the case for Scottish independence.
Trust me, he said in 2007, I’m not JUST a nationalist. But that facade had crumbled by September 18, 2014, the day 10-years-ago Scots voted on whether or not to leave the Union. During an often brutal and unpleasant campaign, Mr Salmond revealed his true self. And he hasn’t stopped, since.
As his threadbare secession plan was calmly picked apart by the late Alistair Darling, leader of the pro-UK Better Together group, the then SNP leader grew angrier and angrier; his behaviour became increasingly erratic. By the end of the campaign, with defeat looming, Mr Salmond was more petulant and unreasonable than he’d ever been (and anyone who knew him during his first spell as SNP leader in the 1990s will tell you he was plenty petulant and unreasonable back then).
Our former FM has spent the past decade seemingly oblivious to the result of his 'once in a lifetime' referendum. Like Hiroo Onoda - the Japanese soldier found hiding in a jungle in the Philippines in 1974 - Mr Salmond refuses to believe he lost the war. And still he fights. And still he shrinks smaller in stature.
The War Against Westminster
For Mr Salmond - and all of those who succeeded him as SNP leader and First Minister - politics is war. And England (although they call it 'Westminster', these days) is the enemy. Those who don’t believe in the SNP’s divisive and intellectually incoherent project are collaborators, Quislings, lesser Scots. If Mr Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, Humza Yousaf, John Swinney and other senior SNP figures see themselves as great generals in a war, then their defeat must be all the more humiliating. After all, they have been soundly beaten, again and again, by the equivalent of the Home Guard, a Mum’s and Dad’s Army of Scots who quietly see them off before going about their business.
The Reality of Public Opinion
A couple of weeks before the independence referendum, a dear friend who was fully committed to the independence project called me from his home in Edinburgh. He’d already accepted the game was up, but his partner thought otherwise.
My chum explained that his other half - along with most of his Yesser pals - had got carried away, believing that the numbers of nationalists taking part in marches was proof that victory was theirs. 'I’ve tried explaining to them all,' he said, 'but none of them are listening.'
What none of my friend’s colleagues wanted to hear was that while there may have been 10, 20, or even 30 thousand nationalists on the streets on that particular Saturday, there were almost six million more Scots going about their lives as usual.
Whipped up by Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon’s rhetoric about a Scotland held back by the cruelty of 'Westminster', those marching through the streets of our cities or gathering outside the BBC’s Glasgow headquarters to hurl abuse at people trying to do their jobs believed they were in a life-or-death war, an existential battle, with an evil empire. They saw themselves as guerrillas in a fight with a tightly drilled infantry.
Unfortunately for those men and women, they were up against something far more deadly. They were up against a majority of Scots who found them ridiculous and irritating. They were up against millions who’d much rather spend their Saturday mornings in the garden centre or taking their kids to the baths than gathering in the rain to wave flags and block traffic in the heart of Glasgow. They were up against normal people.
The SNP's Unrealistic Hopes
Last weekend the SNP’s current leader John Swinney was telling his party’s members that a new generation of Scots would carry the nationalist project to victory. In an interview, the First Minister said that polling showing 63 per cent of under-35s supported independence was proof that the battle might have stalled but that the war was far from over. In time, those Scots would become the majority and the Union would be doomed.
There is one glaring fault with this analysis. Since 2014, around half a million Scots have died. The majority of them were (and polling confirms as much) No voters. If younger Scots are fully committed to the nationalists’ project, this simple fact of life and death should have seen support for independence soar. It has not done so. Rather, the position of Scots on the constitution remains broadly as it was a decade ago.
Ageing No voters are not being replaced by bright enthusiastic and unquestioning Yessers. Instead, a large number of those young nationalists are growing up and realising that the risks of breaking a 300-year-old Union far outweigh the benefits promised by monomaniacal populists such as Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, and John Swinney.
The SNP's Lost Cause
The SNP is now on a kamikaze mission which harms only itself, urging its members to continue a fight that was lost ten years ago. With every promise of another referendum, every claim that the UK is on its deathbed, the nationalists lose yet more supporters who would rather the Scottish government concentrated on fixing the NHS, properly funding the police, and raising standards in an education system corrupted by ideologues who care more about appearances than practical improvements.
There’s something rather pathetic about nationalist gatherings to mark the anniversary of the referendum. Sure, the participants might feel they are marking a great and joyous political awakening but, from the outside, it looks like groups of oddballs celebrating the time the were roundly defeated. A decade after the referendum was lost to a Home Guard of ordinary Scots, Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and every other senior nationalist in Scotland insists that victory remains within reach. Who do they think they are kidding?
