Our choices will define independent Scotland

Some of us who have been campaigning for decades for Scotland to choose independence can be forgiven for being used to spending most of our energy focused on getting to the “D-Day” of choice. To securing one more vote than those opposing independence and therefore “winning”.

Now, however, we must refocus. We have to realise that victory doesn’t come in one hour or moment, it is built with effort over many years. Because independence will not just be made in one day of choice. It will be made good over years and a generation and more to come. Making it good as a means and not an end in itself will define Scotland and its story.

Through the night on Thursday and into Friday morning was not really a time to expect hearts and minds to open and move, least of all amongst our politicians.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is right to raise the pressure on the mechanism for choosing independence.

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Taking a legitimate and democratic route forward matters both for securing a big consensus and also for securing support from the European and international communities. And it is not just in Scotland that minds are opening. Europe and the world are readying to receive Scotland; it is becoming the received wisdom that this is happening. As with so much in the world right now, all the risk is in doing nothing. Independence will look to more and more people as the safest possible option.

It is tempting to expend all of our energy on opposition to the strongman populism of Boris Johnson and his refusal to allow Scotland to choose its own future. However, the job of every one of us who already supports independence is to focus on persuading those of our fellow citizens who are not yet ready to agree, because they are readying.

The single most important factor in delivering independence will be growing support for the principle and idea of it and the plan to deliver it. The world has changed comprehensively since 2014.

We know that somewhere between 5% and 10% of people who voted No last time would now vote Yes. And we know that a similar number have moved in the other direction. Given the realities of a decade and more of Johnsonism and extremist Brexit to come, it seems likely to me that support for independence will rise and possibly quite quickly.

If the case is put well I think that support will grow through the 50s and towards 60% and more. I firmly believe that independence will be won and won big. I also believe that winning big matters for securing the foundations of the new country and managing the transitions and trade-offs that will inevitably follow.

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Persuasion is everything. We need to show that in our behaviour and approach our case will be the antithesis of the strongman, hollow-drum populism of Brexit.

People are not daft. They know that all possible futures that we can choose involve trade-offs and choices, challenges and opportunities. They know that implied in any choice is very significant hard work and effort.

We need to convince that the effort will be worth it. It will.

Creating the institutions we need to govern a modern outward-looking state well will be an investment. Accepting the realities of interdependence across the UK, Europe and the world will mean pragmatism, honesty and a rigorous plan. People deserve to know how we intend to manage the transition and the choices we will have to take and what the implications of them are.

I believe we need to demonstrate our intent to rejoin the European Union as soon as is practicable. We do not currently know what this will mean for the nature of our trading border with the rest of the UK because we have yet to understand exactly what Brexit means for the border between Britain and all of the island of Ireland. This will obviously matter because the implications require to be managed well.

Similarly, Scotland will require to reach agreement with the government of the UK on many issues ranging from the division of assets and debts to continuing shared services, payments, pensions and a myriad of other matters.

After 300 years there is much glue that binds us that will endure through and beyond a transformation in how we choose to govern ourselves.

What many seem to miss in assessing how this will work is the simple truth that the United Kingdom’s liabilities in financial terms far outweigh its assets. As a result, the UK agenda will be in persuading Scotland to shoulder its share of them rather than in resisting Scotland’s claim to a net positive balance of assets that does not, in fact, exist. This discussion, these negotiations, will therefore be balanced and not a one-way street – at all.

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THE report of the Sustainable Growth Commission was largely focused on the managed transition through independence and set-up that will take time. Of course it will. It emphatically was not a vision for what independence will look like forever. That will be for the people to choose in future elections. The whole point of independence is that different visions compete and that we get the government we choose to implement them, every time.

The report did not shirk the difficult truths, hard choices or trade-offs. For some that made difficult reading. But we believe it is necessary to tell the truth.

Further work is required not least on managing the trading border and the detail of our approach to the accession agreement for returning to the European Union.

But a framework now exists that is the most detailed, comprehensive and honest possible account of how we get from where we are now to having sustainable foundations built for the country we will become. The contrast with Brexit could not be sharper.

A large majority for independence is not yet ready, but it is readying. Whether it comes next year or the year after or the year after, that choice will be made with more information and understanding than any other country that has ever made the decision.

Scotland will be richer at the time of choice than any other country ever was. That day of choosing will not be D-Day but “Day One”. And what follows will be a generation of effort and endeavour that will set our country on course to make good its own history.

Hard work, challenges and difficulty face every country on earth in the next generation. Letting the future happen to us would be the riskiest decision we ever made.

Making good the choice of independence on the back of the settled will of the people who have made this country their home will define us all. It will be the making of us all. It is coming.