The SNP must go ahead with the Section 30 vote on day one of the parliamentary session - and then when Westminster say no, we move forward to using the 2029 UK general election as the final act of this drama, and to win independence outright

I suppose when election results come in, we all tend to look back at the predictions we made during the campaign and compare it to reality.  I used to pride myself in avoiding hard predictions, but writing the 73 constituency profiles for The National effectively forced me into it, and I think I did pretty well on the whole.  Although I said Angus Robertson was the likely winner in Edinburgh Central, I did say I thought both the Greens and Labour had a chance there, which pretty much leaves Glasgow Southside as the only one of the 73 that I got completely wrong, which is not a bad record.  Can I just take this opportunity to thank the person who wrote to me before I did the Shetland profile and pointed out that Hannah Mary Goodlad's chances were being underestimated, because I took that tip seriously and looked into it as thoroughly as I could.

However, I think the point on which I've been vindicated the most is what I said last October about the unlikelihood of John Swinney's target of an overall majority being met.  I said at the time that I thought it was a 1 in 200 chance, and even if you think that was an underestimate, I hope you'll agree that the result vividly demonstrates just how murderously difficult the target was to meet, and also demonstrates why that target must never be set again.  We're now going to have to work hard to undo some of the damage caused by setting a precedent that simply cannot be allowed to stand.  The argument was that the stars were aligned for a majority on this particular occasion due to Reform splitting the unionist vote - well, we've fallen a few seats short, and there's no particular reason to think the stars will ever be aligned in that way again, so the hardheaded reality is that if we're going to win independence or an independence referendum, regardless of whether it's with this mandate or a future mandate, it will have to be done with a multi-party Holyrood majority and not a single-party majority.  So the single-party majority target will have to be binned and never allowed to rear its head again.

The way forward is simple enough: we have to act as if we were always looking for the multi-party majority, and go ahead with the vote on the Section 30.  When Westminster say no, we take the Believe in Scotland advice, and use the 2029 Westminster election as the final act in this unnecessarily long drama.  If Reform appear to be on course for victory in England, we ask for an outright mandate for independence as Scotland's last chance to escape Farage rule.  That may well work, but even if it doesn't the strategy will be an each-way bet, because there's always the outside chance of a Green-led government being formed at Westminster that would grant us a referendum anyway.