Ignore Unionists' Trumpian bluster and start campaigning for independence now

And while Trump didn’t get away with it forever the policy of unleashing a blizzard of lies did confuse voters who simply didn’t have the time to work when he was telling the truth or making things up.

It’s a tactic increasingly being adopted by UK politicians and Union-supporting commentators. Take Michael Gove. You may, like me, have watched the Minister for the Cabinet Office (no, I don’t know what that means either) tell Andrew Marr that the Westminster government wouldn’t go to court to try and stop the Scottish Government calling indyref2.

I have to admit thinking this a little strange since Prime Minister Boris Johnson had just been splashed all over the Daily Telegraph vowing to stop another referendum.

Let’s set aside just for a moment the thorny question of whether he actually has the power to stop indyref2. The Telegraph article assumed that he did have that power and furthermore that he intended to use it.

After the Marr programme Gove headed over to BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show where he said the same thing. He repeated it again and again under questioning from Martin Geissler. Gove was crystal clear on the matter.

Yet the following day’s Express headline stated that Gove was refusing to rule out going to court in a bid to block indyref 2.

So now, of course, no-one knows for sure exactly what Westminster’s position on the referendum is, other than they think it’s a very bad thing and they don’t want it.

Just like his bosses in London the leader of the Tories in Scotland doesn’t want it either. In fact, his whole campaign was framed around his claim that a vote for his party was the only way of making sure a referendum wouldn’t take place.

Well the votes have been counted and it turns out Scotland rejected his party. They won 31 seats compared to the SNP’s 64.

When you add the Green’s eight seats to the SNP’s total you end up with a thumping majority of MSPs in favour of holding a second independence referendum.

So given that Ross failed dismally to win enough MSPs to block it, he must admit that democracy demands indyref2 go ahead? Nope. It turns out a vote for Ross wasn’t the only way to stop indyref2. Boris Johnson can just ignore the votes.

How can you purport to be a democratic government when you dismiss the majority view of a whole country? You just can’t, Colin.

Later, right on cue, Gordon Brown entered the fray with perhaps the most ridiculous argument of the week.

He insists Scotland didn’t vote for the referendum, the option which was included in the manifestos of the SNP and the Greens, but for a nebulous “better” Union which wasn’t mentioned in any manifesto, not even his own party’s.

It’s not just the politicians that are at it. The commentariat are colluding in the rewriting of the rules of democracy. Former BBC big beast Andrew Neil will support any definition of democracy no matter how hare-brained, so long as it denies the Scottish Government a mandate for indyref2.

Forgive me if I missed them but I can’t remember any impassioned pleas for electoral reform from Neil in the past. Since the election, though, he’s all for new ways of rethinking what a majority means.

That includes ditching the parliamentary system and replacing it with a requirement for a percentage of the popular vote.

Surely, goes Neil’s argument, that would discredit the case for indyref2? Not quite. Just slightly more than 50% of those voting in the list vote did support parties backing indyref2.

Nor can I remember Neil questioning the legitimacy of the EU referendum, which was pushed through by David Cameron after he won just 36.9% of the vote in the 2015 General Election.

Now, though, Neil describes the SNP winning 62 of Scotland’s 73 constituencies – all but 11 – as a “failure” because they did not win an overall majority.

But there is no requirement for an SNP majority when a majority of pro-indyref parties will back it just as forcibly.

But Neil dismisses that majority too. Only an overall SNP majority would have been enough to put pressure on Boris Johnson, argues Neil in a column in the Daily Mail.

So the current Unionist position can be summed up thus:

- An SNP majority at the Scottish election would have piled pressure on Boris Johnson to agree to indyref2 but not enough to actually get it.

- An overall majority of voters would have been a strong argument for indyref2 but that wouldn’t have been enough to get it either.

- The majority we actually have – that of pro-indyref MSPs – is coincidentally the only majority that they deem doesn’t count.

- When voters support the parties who back indyref2 they should simply be told they actually voted for something else entirely.

- All this is academic anyway because there is no way Scotland can get out of the UK without the permission of Westminster and it will never give it.

- There is nothing at all anti-democratic about this because Scotland votes aren’t counted separately as long as it’s part of the UK and Westminster will never agree to its departure.

- And while Unionists attack the Scottish Government for not “getting on with the day job”, Westminster can strip Holyrood of its powers, pretend to give the country more money but make sure it is spent on projects no-one voted for and then call this campaign to deny us a say in our own future “lovebombing”. Even Trump would be hard pushed to convince anyone to believe that.

But the fact is we don’t need to accept this. It’s true that the referendum will have to wait until Covid is defeated but it will take place within five years.

But the independence movement doesn’t need to wait. We can start the campaign now. We can put forward the arguments, challenge the misinformation and demolish the myths.

Trump paid for his lies. And so will this Union.

We can make sure that when the referendum is called we have already been building support and forging alliances. We will work hard, we will be ready and this time we will win.