Well, it's finally happened. The people of Scotland are going to have the question of whether or not to become an independent state put to them in a democratic referendum. A lot of nationalists may be forgiven for thinking that this was it, we've won. After all, for the past few years we've been so fixated on simply getting the referendum, that it was easy to forget that we still have to win the thing!
Well, if nothing else, the results of the Scottish elections definitively put an end to any quibbling or petty arguments about the people of Scotland's choosing of their constitutional future. The starkness and definitive nature of the result can be seen in the raw parliamentary arithmetic, the electoral map, and on Youtube, in the shocked faces of candidates, both SNP and otherwise, as their results came in. All uncertainty has been removed, on both sides of the argument. Unionists have had to face up to the fact that, like it or not, there will be a referendum in which the people will exercise their democratic right to choose. To their credit, most of the intelligent ones among them (they do exist) have done so with good grace, and recognise their need to build a positive case for the Union if it is to be preserved. No doubt these same intelligent Unionists are thoroughly dismayed by the recent rumours that Lord Reid will be the man to lead their campaign.....
However, the immediacy and tangibility of the referendum we have long campaigned for also provides some challenges for we nationalists. Politically, nationalism and a desire for independence is what defines us, and it is the only thing that fully unites the SNP. We are a broad church, and whisper it, but without independence many of us would be very at home with Labour, the Lib Dems or the Tories. And yet, in recent years, we have not been doing much talking about independence. This is entirely understandable. The SNP is a nationalist party, but it rightly is also a realist and gradualist party. It has spent the last four years governing competently, addressing the major domestic policy issues and not wasting its time trying to persuade the Unionist majority in the parliament to take their heads out of the sand long enough to hold a referendum.
However this is no longer the case. The election result has put independence right into the spotlight, and has had many of us re-examining our reasons for wanting independence, of which there are as many as there are nationalists. Sometimes, hanging around only with nationalists means we can forget why we want independence, as we all take turns to agree with each other in conversation. Now, with independence cropping up in conversations with other friends, who may not necessarily immediately agree with us, we must get used to hearing our ideas challenged.
So, why do you want independence?
