I USED to think that the 1980s represented the political nadir of my lifetime. For those too young to remember, that was the decade of Thatcherism and Reaganomics. The main goal of the transatlantic double act was to turn the USA and the UK into citadels of greed and inequality.

They slashed public services, sold off national assets at bargain basement prices, clamped down on trade unions, and relentlessly redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich. All of this while piling up nuclear weapons, arming Islamist fundamentalists and destabilising elected governments which refused to dance to their cacophonous music.

Over three decades later, we have the follow-up act. With the world a more dangerous and divided place than it was when Thatcher and Reagan were elected 35 years ago, the coming decade is already starting to look like an over-the-top remake of the 1980s, starring Donald J Trump and Theresa May, and directed from the shadows by Nigel Farage.

It was heartening to see millions of women, and men, rising up against the election of a self-confessed sexual predator to the highest political office in the world. But he was delivered to power by the people. Protest is noble – and hopefully, this is the start of a huge movement across the USA that will unseat Trump and shift the country to the left, with a knock-on effect worldwide. But for millions of Americans, it’s already too late.

Trump was helped by the low turn-out, with just 54 per cent of eligible voters bothering to cross their ballot papers. It’s a strange paradox that, in a country that does political razzmatazz on a Grand Canyonesque scale, the turnout since 1968 has never reached 60 per cent.

Those who stand to be hit hardest by Trump – women, black and ethnic minorities, the poor, the young – were the least likely to vote. As on this side of the Atlantic, the democratic freedoms fought for by our ancestors to allow the most excluded to participate are now most enthusiastically taken up by those whose lives are already quite alright, thanks. It strikes me that one-person, one-vote is only truly democratic when it authentically reflects the make-up of the nation.

That’s not to blame those who failed to vote. It’s the fault of political systems – and particularly the ideology of the failed “middle way” – that has led us directly to Trump and Brexit. So, to quote The Proclaimers, what do you do when democracy fails you?

In Scotland, we’ve lived our lives with democracy perpetually failing us. For more than half my lifetime, we’ve lived under governments in Westminster that Scotland rejected. And now we’re hitched to a Brexit juggernaut against our will.

We still have one more shot at seizing democratic control through indyref2. In the past, I’ve argued that the referendum should be delayed until we’re sure of winning, with poll ratings for Yes of around 60 per cent. Now I’m convinced that we won’t reach anything that like that level of support until we get the campaign underway.

There is no rush – and Nicola Sturgeon is right to rule out a referendum this year. But neither can we keep dangling over the edge, indefinitely. Time is slipping away – and there’s no guarantee there will be a majority for independence in the next parliament.

A one-year run-in seems right to me. And it has to be in the autumn rather than the spring, to allow a summer of campaigning before the vote. Hopefully, the Scottish Government has already pencilled in September 2018, exactly four years on from indyref1.

Now is the time to take control. The zeitgeist beaming from our TV screens and newspaper front pages is profoundly reactionary. Without a direct challenge, the rhetoric unleashed by Brexit could gather momentum even in Scotland. Many were motivated to vote Yes for change in 2014. Some may now be swept on board the only bandwagon for change currently gathering speed. And that’s the one that’s hurtling in a rightwards direction.

We need a clear, simple vision of independence we can unite around and take to the people. Especially to those with the most to gain. And whatever the exact timing we need to start now on a drive to maximise the turnout, by getting the young and the marginalised onto the electoral roll.

And maybe we should start to seriously consider online voting. Is it not daft that we’re still going to the polls in the same way we’ve done since 1872? Can we not at least offer both options? Estonia launched an optional online voting system a decade ago, which is now used by more than 30 per cent of voters.

Sure, there are risks. I can hear now people, on both sides of the independence debate, warning of manipulation and hacking, especially after the allegations of Russian interference in the US Presidential election. It goes without saying that security must be assured.

But can we not harness Scotland’s top technological brains to develop a watertight, 100 per cent secure referendum voting app? Given the binary Yes/No choice, this would surely be easier than trying to roll out a new system for a complex multi-party election such as we have for Holyrood and local councils.

It would need legislation too. But we got voting for 16 and 17-year-olds through pretty fast. There’s a clear majority for Yes among younger age groups. An app fit for the 21st century might just help swell the turnout and get us over the line.

Turnout won’t be solved by technology alone. Our biggest challenge is to inspire people – especially the massed regiments out there who struggle to pay the bills, who work in soul-destroying dead-end jobs, who live in drab housing estates, who look to the future with pessimistic trepidation.

We need to convince people there is a better future in the palm of their hands. And help them to seize that future, perhaps even with the simple touch of a button on their mobile phones.