For the last few weeks (probably months, actually), I've been receiving Mike Small's Substack email newsletter - which is basically Bella-style articles in email form. I presume my details must have been imported from the old Bella mailing list, because I didn't specifically sign up for it. However, I found today's article really helpful, because it quotes extensively from John Swinney's new independence plan, so I'm now much clearer in my mind what it actually is - and yes, there's a big plot hole in the middle of it, but the good news is the SNP are at least talking about independence and talking about putting it at the forefront of their election campaign.
One thing I actually agree with John Swinney about is that the SNP need a big statement win at next year's Holyrood election if independence is to be achieved. I've found it quite curious that the SNP's critics have been making exactly the same demands of the party after last year's general election result as they did before it, thus taking no account of the fact that as far as many people were concerned, the SNP's defeat last year took independence off the agenda for an indefinite period - or "until further notice" might be a better way of putting it. It should be a statement of the obvious that there has to be a clear demonstrative moment of "independence is back in business", achieved in a major election, before anything can actually be progressed. That's not to say that you can't also seek a more specific mandate next year, because more than one objective can be pursued simultaneously, but the reality is that independence is currently tucked away in a box and can only break out of that box with a good election result - which means the SNP remaining the largest party and remaining the party of government, and the SNP and Greens between them retaining a pro-independence majority. The latter bit is going to be tough, although polls suggest it's certainly not unachievable.
A complicating factor is that even if all of the above happens, the SNP are likely to lose seats simply because they had such a stonking landslide last time around. That will obviously detract from any statement win, but perhaps the problem can be offset if the combined SNP/Green seat haul exceeds the 2021 result. Again, that's a very tall order, but it's not totally impossible that Green gains could make up for any SNP losses. (And no, the clusterbourachs that are the Alba Party and "Liberate Scotland" have no role to play in any of this, because they're not going to win any seats at all.)
So absolutely, John Swinney is correct that if you want independence, you need the SNP to do really well next year. That will be an unalloyed Good Thing in its own right. Where I part company from his independence plan is in its insistence that only an agreed referendum can win independence, on the grounds that there needs to be "international legitimacy" and "recognition". That's a form of sophistry, because Scotland will automatically acquire legitimacy and recognition as soon as it concludes an independence agreement with the UK government. It doesn't actually matter a damn how you get to that agreement. Yes, one way of doing it would be to win a pre-agreed referendum, but there are several other possibilities. You could use a scheduled election as a de facto referendum and then pressurise the UK to accept the legitimacy of the outcome retrospectively - that's exactly how Ireland achieved independence and international recognition. (And who knows, if Ireland hadn't forced the issue in that way, and had instead waited forever and a day for an "agreed referendum", perhaps it would never have become independent and would have become trapped within a devolved framework.). A third possibility, which I think is the most likely, is that a majority vote in a de facto referendum could be used as leverage to bring the UK government kicking and screaming to the negotiating table, and to coax a compromise from them on holding a confirmatory referendum.
So given that a pre-agreed referendum is self-evidently not a prerequisite for legitimacy or international recognition, it can only be concluded that we're not being told the genuine reason for the SNP leadership insisting independence can only be done that way. Cynics might suggest that the main attraction is that it's the only option that actually requires permission in advance from London, permission that everyone knows will not be granted, thus neatly getting the leadership off the hook of ever having to do anything about independence, and allowing them to get on with their alleged true love of running a devolved government in peace and quiet. But it might not be that. It might just be a form of strategic timidity, and a craving for the goal to just fall into our laps rather than us having to force the issue by doing anything too noisy. Alas, the world doesn't work that way. Not usually, anyway.
On the other hand, we do live in a world where the likes of Alba and Liberate Scotland have completely screwed up and thrown away any conceivable chance of bringing about independence from outside the SNP, which means that however sceptical we may be about John Swinney's plan, he has to be given his chance to make it work. That's realistically the only game in town, and at the end of the day nobody actually gives a monkey's whether a plan seems to work in theory, only in whether it works in practice.
The big plot hole I was referring to is Mr Swinney's insistence that a great election result for the SNP will force the UK government to grant a referendum, when we all know that great election results for the SNP in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2021 did not impress London in the slightest. But if he defies the odds by converting an election win into a 'gold standard' referendum, no-one will be complaining. He'll be judged on the results he's promised, and it's only if and when he fails to produce those results that SNP members will perhaps tap him on the shoulder and say: "John, you've done us a tremendous service by steadying the ship after the Yousaf era and winning a key election that has re-established the credibility of the independence cause. But you've now taken us as far as you can, and the time has come for you to hand over the reins to someone with the skills and ideas to actually take us to independence itself."
By the way, I couldn't help but raise a smile when Mike Small interjected to say "I don't really know what that actually means?" about one of John Swinney's remarks. Now you know, Mike, how the rest of us feel when we read Bella Caledonia articles about postmodern cacophonic spaces nurtured by surrealist hyper-ideological anarchic gender-capitalism, or whatever.
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