Keith Brown's statement is not a long-overdue sign of realism - it's a sign of abject surrender to Westminster

Well, what a bind we're in as a movement.  Yesterday's Opinium poll was better than anyone could really have dreamed of at this stage and offered huge grounds for optimism that the SNP might well win a fifth consecutive term in government - which, if it happens, is going to be an almighty jolt to a political and journalistic establishment that had convinced itself that the tide has gone out decisively on the SNP and that a Sarwar-led government at Holyrood is a racing certainty.  And make no mistake, an SNP win would be a huge boost for independence, if only in the sense that if it didn't happen, the setback for independence would be enormous.  But there just doesn't seem to be any direct way forward from an SNP win to independence, because the SNP leadership are hoisting the flag of surrender, and they're doing it in plain sight.

A few people welcomed the depute leader Keith Brown's admission that Westminster will never grant another Section 30 order, as if it was a long-overdue sign of some realism creeping in.  But it's actually the total opposite, because he went on to clarify that independence can never be won without a referendum.  By "not playing by Westminster's rules", what Brown really appears to mean is that we have to totally surrender to Westminster's rigged rules, ie. we have to accept that something as prosaic as mere electoral mandates for a referendum or for independence are no longer sufficient and that we'll need ridiculously overwhelming levels of public support that simply aren't attainable in the real world.

In truth, if we really did stop playing by Westminster's rules, it would mean saying "sorry, but we don't need an unattainable supermajority, actually, in a democracy we just need a simple majority, and we're going to seek an outright mandate for independence via a scheduled election, which is something that you have no power to stop us doing".  That is so obviously the best and only way forward that it's surely inevitable that the SNP will have to embrace it sooner or later, but at the moment it looks very much like "later".   It's as if we're all left twiddling our thumbs until it happens.  Goodness only knows how many more years and leadership changes it will take for the penny to finally drop.

In the meantime, we do have a party in Alba that "gets it" and that will be offering voters a chance to vote for independence outright on the Holyrood list.  But the problem is that there seems to be quite a low ceiling on potential support for any radical independence party, and Alba will need to max that support out if they are to win any list seats at all and thus be in a position to do anything to move us forward.  In order to get that maximum support they'll need to be as broad a church as possible, they'll need to be welcoming, tolerant and inclusive.  They'll need to be a 'shining village on a hill' that everyone looks up to longingly and can't wait to visit.  

I don't think it should be controversial to point out that Alba are actually doing the opposite of that.  They're becoming an ever more narrow sect that lives inside a forbidding fortress.  Freedom of speech and dissenting views are being cracked down on, both by direct means and by fostering a climate of fear in which people feel they have to self-censor.  No attempts are being made to build bridges with the significant number of people who have already felt they had no choice but to leave the party, including Eva Comrie, who was probably the most popular figure in Alba other than Alex Salmond himself.  Other people who wanted to stay in Alba have been expelled, and that will presumably continue to happen.  (Indeed if Yvonne Ridley's boast has any truth to it, I could be next in line, although I'm no closer to finding out, because - as I predicted last week - Alba are deliberately "throwing a deefie" and totally ignoring my emails, even though I copied them to the General Secretary, the Deputy General Secretary, the party chair and the party leader.)  

On their current trajectory, Alba are likely to get between 1% and 3% of the list vote and to win no seats at all, which will simply be of no use to anyone.

If there was fundamental change in either the SNP or Alba, we might start to get somewhere, but how is that going to happen?  I've made no secret of the fact that I would welcome Kate Forbes as SNP leader, not least because I think she's the most electable person they've got, but I can't see any evidence at all that she would abandon the do nothing approach on independence.

And are there any signs of life outside the SNP and Alba?  Not that I can see.  The ISP have apparently gone down a very peculiar path by adopting abstentionism for Holyrood as well for Westminster, which rules them out of serious consideration as a vehicle for independence.  I was tickled to discover that Peter A Bell has set up his own political party, although perhaps I shouldn't be too dismissive, because if Alba do expel me, I could be needing a bolthole before too long.  (I know, I know, he'd never let me in!)  I suppose as a last resort some people might consider setting up yet another new party, but by God, that would be a long and hard road and might be wholly counter-productive.  It would be much better to get the existing parties into some kind of shape, but how to even begin achieving that is a massive conundrum.