The choice in May is simple: either keep the flame of independence burning, or extinguish it completely until 2026

The other day, I challenged Wings readers to ask Stuart what his plan was for using this election to bring independence closer, rather than push it further way.  If voting for the SNP is supposedly harmful, then who should we vote for instead, and how will that help?  I don't know if he read that post or if it was just coincidence, but a few hours later he posted this - 

"We wish we had a constructive course of action to suggest to you, folks. But we don’t, because democracy has failed you. There is no way you can vote that will fix the ruins the SNP have made of Scotland. We cannot see a way forward. It is becoming nearly impossible to evade the conclusion that all is lost. Nicola Sturgeon has destroyed it."

And, in fairness, that's a very clear and direct answer to the question I wanted posed.  He's given up on independence, has no plan for making it happen, and thinks no such plan is even possible.  The problem is, of course, that it's a dreadful and self-evidently wrong answer that his readers - most of whom still passionately long for independence - must reject.  It doesn't even make sense on the basis of Stuart's own world view.  If, as he believes, Nicola Sturgeon is the biggest roadblock to independence and that the current SNP leadership have no intention of taking the steps necessary to bring a referendum about, it surely must have occurred to him that if the SNP win this election there would be five more years of government in which a leadership change could occur - and that would be pretty likely to happen, because Ms Sturgeon has already served as First Minister for six and a half years, and ten years often proves to be the shelf-life for even the most successful leader.  If, say, Joanna Cherry or someone with similar views were to take over, they could actually do something with that power if the pro-indy parties have a majority in the Scottish Parliament - but they would be utterly powerless if there's no majority.  And the question of whether there's a majority or not will be determined in the election this May.  It's not rocket science - so why does Stuart not seem to care what the result of that election is? Actually, strike that, why does he seem to be actively campaigning to make a pro-independence majority less likely to happen?

I'd just note that Stuart has been insisting to his readers for months that Nicola Sturgeon's departure is inevitable, and is just a question of when not if.  If he truly believes that, and if it hasn't been a gigantic bluff, then even the strongest Sturgeon-sceptic should have no reservation in campaigning for a pro-indy majority in May, because the First Minister won't be around for much longer anyway.  Indeed, it would probably be better if a leadership change waits until after the election, because at that point there's more likely to be an adventurous choice of successor.  Immediately before an election, all the SNP would care about is picking a safe pair of hands to get us through the next few weeks.  (John Swinney is the name that springs to mind.)

There's also the possibility that Stuart is wrong and that a majority SNP government would deliver independence even under Nicola Sturgeon's leadership.  It's impossible to quantify the likelihood of that in percentage terms, but isn't it worth giving ourselves the chance of finding out?  All of these points boil down to the same basic choice - we either keep the flame of hope alive by electing a pro-indy majority in May, or we extinguish all hope until at least 2026.  Isn't keeping hope alive the logical thing to do, and if you don't think that, aren't you part of the problem?

Incidentally, I don't for a moment believe the conspiracy theorists, such as controversial journalist David Leask, who say that Stuart is a 'plant', put there to destroy the independence movement from within.  I think he just has an 'all or nothing' psychological disposition, which leads him to catastrophise and become destructive when things aren't going in the way he hoped.  But it's up to others to pull him out of that pit, not to jump in with him and drag this whole country in too.