TO SEE some commentary, you’d think that the SNP had lost Thursday’s election and the wheels are now coming loose on the independence bandwagon.

So let’s put the result in perspective. The percentage constituency vote for the SNP on Thursday was the highest ever recorded in a Holyrood election. And it was larger than Labour has ever achieved in any parliamentary election Scotland since 1966, half a century ago, in the days when politics was effectively a two-party system.

So let’s not be downbeat. And let’s raise three cheers for the election of high-calibre SNP MSPs such as Jeanne Freeman, whose formidable talents should guarantee her ministerial office...

I also congratulate the new Scottish Green Party MSPs. I know some Green activists hoped to do better, but I think they had a great result given the power of the SNP juggernaut.

Some SNP bloggers seem upset that the party no longer has an overall majority. But the pro-independence majority in Holyrood is as strong as it was, and Thursday’s outcome has underlined the fact that the movement is diverse and does not belong to a single party.

The referendum could never have reached 45 per cent without that broad coalition of forces which included the Scottish Green Party, Women for Independence, the Radical Independence Campaign and others.

Pardon me for straight talking – and I know some of this may upset some good friends of mine.

Since September 2014, we’ve forgotten the importance of diversity and unity, the two complementary pillars upon which the movement that brought us to the brink of independence was based.

There are various reasons for that: the winding up of Yes Scotland; the incredible growth of the SNP membership; the seismic shift in the 2015 general election.

All of that created a sense that the SNP were the only legitimate standard bearers of the cause, and that Scotland’s future was 100 per cent tied up with the success or failure of the SNP.

That was always a mathematical illusion. The SNP’s remarkable 50 per cent of the vote in 2015 was not so much an unconditional endorsement of the party as an uprising against Jim Murphy’s Labour party.

Even the spectacular 46.5 per cent constituency vote for the SNP on Thursday is, realistically, unlikely to be sustained through the term of this parliament in the teeth of Westminster cuts.

Our electoral system is designed to balance up the number of seats in Parliament to broadly reflect the proportions that people vote in. Its underlying intention was to prevent any party (and more specifically the SNP) winning an overall majority.

The 2011 outcome was an aberration, and a hard task to achieve.

Making an overall majority for one party the litmus test of success for the independence movement was, in my opinion, a gift to the unionists. It also led to the untargeted, blunderbuss, Scotland-wide, campaign of Both Votes SNP. It’s entirely understandable that SNP partisans wanted to maximise the number of votes for their party on both ballot papers. The Greens too campaigned in Kelvin and Edinburgh Central for both votes. The SSP did the same at its height when I was elected to Holyrood back in 2003.

I suppose political parties could never be expected to develop a coherent strategy beyond maximising their own vote. That’s what political parties do.

But had there still existed a wider Yes Alliance, with the kind of authority that Yes Scotland commanded during the referendum campaign, we could have been in an even stronger position today.

Outside of the Highlands and South Scotland, every single list vote for the SNP was effectively wasted. A quarter of a million votes were thrown in the bin.

In Glasgow, for example, if just over one in five of these SNP list votes had gone to the Greens and just over one in ten to Rise, the political balance of forces would have been entirely different. Both the Tories and one Labour MSP would have been replaced by three strong pro-independence campaigners, including The National columnist Cat Boyd and Women for Independence activist Zara Kitson. It would probably have helped had Patrick Harvie not put his energy into trying to unseat Sandra White in Glasgow Kelvin.

I hope the results on Thursday will be the catalyst for a discussion about renewing the broad Yes alliance. We need somewhere above party politics to talk strategy towards our common goal of independence. I recognise that without the SNP’s cooperation, it won’t happen. But I hope they have enough confidence in their own power to countenance letting some of it go.

To deliver independence, it’s necessary to reassure people that independence offers policy choice, rather than SNP government in perpetuity.

We also need to build trust again across the whole spectrum of independence supporting individuals and forces. Some of the rhetoric in this campaign was unhelpful.

I voted Rise in my region and believe that despite its low vote, it has an important role to play in the future. But it really does need to tone down some of the over-the-top rhetoric that some of its activists directed towards the SNP.

I’VE made no secret of my disagreement with some SNP policies on issues like taxation, the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, and the Named Person legislation. But on the grand scale of things, none of this compares to some of the diabolical actions of New Labour in recent history, such as bombing Iraq to smithereens, backing nuclear weapons of mass destruction, locking out desperate refugees, slashing benefits or dismantling public services.

The fact that the SNP has swept the board right across Red Clydeside shows that most people don’t see the party as wicked tartan Tories. It’s right to stand firm on policy and principles, but tone and balance are equally important. Rise will do better in the future if they concentrate on delivering radical ideas in contemporary, positive language (and a logo on their ballot paper might have helped too?).

So we are where we are – with a majority of independence supporting MSPs in the parliament. It’s enough to deliver a referendum – and it may come sooner than any of us expect, depending on external events.

If we are to carry forward the independence movement towards the 55 to 60 per cent we need to guarantee victory, I’m convinced we need to revive the pluralist yes movement, to discuss now, and prepare now, for when we need to unleash the creativity and dynamism of 2014 once again.