SUNDAY’S contribution by the BBC’s Scotland editor Sarah Smith to BBC Radio 4’s Our Own Correspondent was straight out of the top drawer of grievance politics. She purported to be exploring the prospects of another referendum vote anytime soon and was contrasting the grassroots campaign with utterances from senior SNP figures including the long-serving Pete Wishart, and was content to illustrate how the cards were stacked against that prospect.

There was no reference to the undermining of the devolution settlement and the emphatic majority in the Scottish Parliament in refusing consent to Westminster’s power grab. No mention of the complete disregard for Mike Russell’s tireless contribution to the Brexit process, simply the assertion that permission is required for indyref2, and the reasons that it’s unlikely to be granted.

No evaluation of a First Minister committed since her youth to an independent Scotland yet fighting for the very soul of the devolution settlement and in the process uniting implacable political foes. No mention, by way of scene-setting, of Scotland’s vote to stay in the EU and hence partly colouring the parliament’s position of protecting its right to repatriated powers flowing from Brexit. No mention of Scotland’s stand against fracking and its heinous desecration of the environment which would be at risk from Westminster’s power grab. No mention of the deep anxiety and utter lack of trust that these crazed bunch of Tory zealots wouldn’t come after Scotland’s valued NHS so as to better package up a healthcare opportunity for Yankee investors in pursuit of the Tory Leavers’ new island of dreams.

I don’t do Twitter but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if this reckless and provocative report got Ms Smith her into hot water with the twitterati yet again.

What really irritated me was my impression that the SNP were on the back foot again. Despite being reasonably well-informed on the current political affairs of my country, I had allowed doubt to seep in at the edges of my dream of independence in the very near future. Only then did I become severely irritated that I’d been so comprehensively taken in. This was quality propaganda.

It did, however, highlight for me the weakness of the indyref2 proposition.

Alex Salmond is rightly proud of the gold standard label for the independence referendum in 2014, but that was as much to do with the arrogance of David Cameron and his conceit that he could be magnanimous in Alex’s request as there was no way Alex and his northern hordes could win.

The gold standard is now consigned to history. We have a Prime Minister cornered on all fronts, a British establishment on the defensive with nowhere to park their nukes when they lose, and no substitute for the golden eggs from the Scottish oil goose.

We’ve tried hard with British democracy as practised in the Mother of Parliaments despite the fact that most of us thought we were flogging a dead horse. Please no more supplication. Let’s cut ourselves free from this rotten corpse of the British body politic.

But beware of the advisory referendum advocated by many as the bypass strategy to Westminster consent. We really mustn’t play their game.

Quite apart from the onslaught by the Ruth Davidson’s No More Referendum Party, they will maximise the boycott opportunity to declare any result illegitimate. And remember McMillan’s “events dear boy, events” as the fast-moving situation in the Irish border question lends credence to the prospects of a soon-to-be-united Ireland. If they can solve one of the biggest imponderables by cutting Northern Ireland adrift, they then have all the more power and resources to focus on getting the jocks back in their box.

The exodus of EU citizens is already under way. They don’t need to wait to see the outcome of Brexit if we’re to believe Nicola’s recent pronouncements on her intentions.

Surely the independence issue is now well beyond Brexit. It’s the process of Brexit that’s laid bare the poverty of our relations and the untrustworthiness our neighbours of 300 years.

I’ve the highest regard for Mike Russell but he must now move beyond putting his energies into defending devolution and remember why he and Nicola joined the SNP. Never have the gradualists – who not only have dominated the party, but also provided all the evidence of their ability to govern in the name of all of Scotland’s people – been this close to their ultimate prize.

We need to be biased in the pursuit of our independence, not reasonable in our pursuit of independence.

We need to be belligerent in our challenge to the Britnats and their naked self-interest in pursuit of Home County values (even if they live in Perthshire or Morayshire) to prove that what they offer is better than independence.

We need to stop playing by the Westminster rule book.

The First Minister is emphatic that it is for the people to decide when we next have a referendum on independence. How much more of the Westmonster panto must we endure before we accept the clear evidence that the “Scotch” are not welcome in the Mother of Parliaments? We can’t even get a motion on the rights of EU nationals to remain in the UK accepted as an elementary mark of a decent society.

Let’s break the rules, ignore the Brexit timetable. Let the Scottish citizenry give notice to their elected representatives to negotiate the dissolution of the Treaty of Union. Let those same representatives – after all, we have a comfortable majority of SNP MPs – return home to a new Scottish Convention and, with the recalled MEPs and our Holyrood contingent, take time to deliberate on the issues and produce a written constitution for our new country which can then be put to the Scottish people in a referendum for ratifacation held under our rules. Then if Tories boycott it, it doesn’t matter.

Iain Bruce
Nairn