TWO things became blatantly apparent this week. Boris Johnson scurrying north for some hurried photo calls to “save the Union” revealed the rising panic of a Prime Minister who has failed to persuade Scotland to back the Union, but who doesn’t want to be responsible for breaking it up.

Secondly, it’s sadly clear that some independence supporters see it as the end point, obsessing over fights about the route to get there, rather than serious debate about what independence can mean.

It’s even more dismaying that some in the independence movement seem to demand that marginalised communities, like trans people, simply wheesht about their basic human rights, meekly enduring prejudice and hostility in the interests of a movement that offers them no solidarity. They won’t, and they shouldn’t be expected to. That is not the independence movement we need. Independence is about building a better society for everyone, and the movement to achieve it must work to those values too.

After 20 opinion polls in a row showing majority support for Scotland to take a different path than the inward-looking, free-market Brexit we face, the Scottish Conservatives laughably tried to quell the debate by, er, bringing a debate on it to Parliament.

This is because while their part-time leader Douglas Ross is panicking at the polls, he also hopes a campaign doubling down on the Tory refusal to engage with democracy will consolidate the hardline Unionist base won by Ruth Davidson in 2016.

With the Tories in panic mode, Scottish Labour still cannot decide what it is for, less than 100 days from an election.

READ MORE: Tories lose Holyrood vote on scrapping another independence referendum

Doubling down on a Union engaged in a race to the bottom is a betrayal of Scotland’s workers; on the other hand, any promises to look again at some kind of federalism are all too familiar. The word is used all too often, but with no plan and no credibility.

A third of those who voted Labour at the last election now support independence, and many more are open to being persuaded. But their vision of independence is borne out of necessity, not nationalism, through a desire for progressive change and a recognition that Westminster is not going to deliver that change.

There is already a majority for independence in the Scottish Parliament. Green MSPs have ensured that majority, but we have also pushed the SNP in a more progressive direction and shown that independence is a project of political pluralism. More Scottish Green MSPs than ever before, as the polls show is possible, would send the clearest signal that independence is only the beginning of a new Scotland. It would show that we are determined to achieve independence, but also that we have the courage now to begin building the fairer, greener country we want to live in.

I’m proud that unlike the Unionist parties, the Scottish Greens have been constructive in opposition. We’re the only opposition party to actually deliver on manifesto pledges, such as reforming income tax, support for carers and increasing the spend on green infrastructure.

In the budgets we’ve saved libraries and swimming pools, secured environmental protections and won free bus travel for everyone under 19, which comes into force this year.

We’ve held the SNP to account too, ensuring a winter eviction ban, that frontline staff get access to regular testing during the pandemic and of course righted the wrong of the students who had their Higher marks lowered last summer based on what school they went to.

Greens in the next session of parliament can ensure that Scotland takes the action needed to challenge vested interests. Those that hoard wealth and have got rich on the back of this pandemic. Those who pursue unlimited oil and gas extraction and deny the necessity of an end date. Those who leave up to a fifth of our land barren so a privileged few can enjoy bloodsports.

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It has been up to the Greens to push the Scottish Government on worker’s rights, on the urgency of the climate and nature emergencies and on land reform. Where the SNP have centralised, we have pushed for more powers for communities.

We’ve had a huge impact with a handful of MSPs. A single-party SNP majority isn’t needed to win independence, and it isn’t the best way to work for the early days of our better nation. It would endorse an unsustainable economic model, it would reward target-setting instead of action on things like child poverty and climate. And it would leave people whose rights have been put on hold asking themselves if Scotland will ever be a safe and welcoming place for them.

There is a way to deliver a majority for independence which also holds the Government to account. That is by sending a strong group of Green MSPs to Holyrood in May.