Kevin McKenna: The summer of independence is stalling – we need a date for indyref2

This summer, we were assured, would bristle and thrum with talk of independence. Ministers, MSPs and activists had been instructed to make their holidays brief and early, and be ready for the Summer of Independence.

Yet now, as late summer prepares a home for early autumn, of a second referendum we have heard nothing: The Summer of Independence has instead become one of Ambivalence. The voices that have been heard have been urging caution and a soft approach, even as the unitary British state is crumbling before us. What better summer than this post-Brexit one could there have been to begin again the national conversation on self-determination?

However, as the First Minister ponders how hard she conveys the message of independence she ought to view the SNP autumn conference as an opportunity. In the immediate aftermath of England voting to self-immolate and withdraw from Europe after being whipped into a racist frenzy of anti-immigrant paranoia, Sturgeon said that a second independence referendum was now “highly likely”. Yet, indyref2 was always “highly likely”. What the country needed to hear was: “This is when it will happen.”

It’s since been pointed out that 400,000 Yes voters must also have voted to exit the EU. This though, should not spook party strategists. These people will vote to leave the UK once more. What is more important is that several hundred thousand No voters voted to remain in Europe. It’s from among these people that independence will be won or lost next time around.

It’s difficult to think of a more propitious set of circumstances in which to announce the beginning of a second independence campaign than those we have at present. Even before Brexit, each week, it seemed, brought further evidence that venality, corruption and avarice are the foundation stones of the British state. We were favoured with a glimpse of all four when the Panama papers disgorged the names of the British companies and individuals who are cheating the UK of desperately needed revenue. But it was only a glimpse.

The outrage evaporated very quickly though, and the waters rapidly closed over them once more. No further questions were asked at Westminster or in the Unionist-leaning press about the men and women who hide their fortunes behind such larceny. No moves were made to question the Institute of Chartered Accountants about the activities and accepted practices of many of that august body’s members in facilitating theft on the grand scale. Like so many other UK professional bodies it has been immorally acquiescent in the activities of its members. Instead, as usual, the poorest people in Britain continued to be hounded and squeezed to within inches of their livelihoods to pay for the sins of the banking sector.

Not long afterwards, Westminster committed more than £200 billion to the renewal of weapons of mass destruction. Between this and Brexit alone Scotland, against the profoundly expressed wishes of a majority of its people, will be denuded of untold billions in finances and lost business by a nation that is still rooting about in the 19th century for solutions to the world’s problems.

Indyref2 is put top of the agenda

The next time any amateur, snake-oil types on the internet try to tell you about the deficit in an independent Scotland, just remind them of this.

Later, there came broken guarantees of Clyde-built warships and Westminster’s refusal to lift a finger to help the last remnants of a steel industry that its patron saint, Margaret Thatcher, began to dismantle 30 years ago. Yet we prostrate ourselves before the UK’s wasteful and self-indulgent farming community, many of whom effectively run their farms on the buroo. It’s one law for these avid handout kings and perennial Tories, and quite another for all other UK communities who encounter economic hardship owing to the vagaries of the free market, the house religion of Westminster.

Normally, you would expect the Labour Party to stand up to the sins of capitalism being visited on those communities that provide the bedrock of their support. In the Parliamentary Labour Party though, we are witnessing the real legacy of Thatcherism. It’s not Trotskyist entryists who have been responsible for the downfall of this great party but the acolytes, sleepers and entryists led by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson 20 years ago who have killed it. Ian Murray, another Scot who will never be mistaken for a ray of sunshine, said that Jeremy Corbyn didn’t get Scotland; nor, though, does Scottish Labour, the party Murray purported to represent, if anyone actually noticed.

And, in case anyone was sleeping, the first shots in the independence battle have just been fired by RBS, the Jesse James of global banking, and the BBC. What possessed RBS chief executive Ross McEwan to choose this as the time to say that RBS would be too big for the economy of an independent Scotland is anyone’s guess. And no, I don’t know what he means by that either. Perhaps he means that his bank has already bled its Scottish customers dry and would need to find a bigger supply. What he didn’t say was that RBS would be moving its HQ out of Scotland, as the BBC claimed. The damage though, had been done, as McEwan knew full well it would.

So, Nicola, the phoney war is over and the real battle for independence has started again, whether you like it or not. I understand some of your caution about going too early, but don’t wait around too long for the ideal polling patterns to emerge. Talk of an alignment of polls indicating 60 per cent support for Yes is sophistry.

During October’s SNP conference in Glasgow, at the very least, you need to announce unequivocally how soon a second independence referendum will happen; the sooner the better. Be inspired, Nicola, by the words of Albert Camus, the famous Racing Universitaire d’Alger goalkeeper: “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”