Indy marches are about more than waving a Saltire at Boris Johnson

She thought the business of voting all too tedious given there was such a large, in-built majority for the Tory government; found it a bit of a waste voting when every time the Government won a thumping majority. “You sort of think what’s the point?”

I hope someone from the Labour whips’ office has since taken the time to shake some sense into Canterbury’s Rosie Duffield. And explained none too gently that if everyone took the same attitude there wouldn’t be much point in parliamentary democracy. In fact, if the PM tried to shut up shop again this term, nobody might much notice. Or, worse still, care.

Opposition matters. It matters to keep democracy healthy and governments honest. And perhaps it matters even more when the opposition troops are spread pretty thinly. And it matters here in Scotland where the Government did very well in the election, and hopes to repeat the scale of its success in the Scottish variety next year.

It may not be a popular thought, but I wish the opposition in Scotland could get more of a decent act together. Because a government in office for a long time, whose challenges amount to not much more than a weekly recitation of familiar, much-recycled jibes, is a government in danger of complacency, and liable to have a dangerous belief in its own publicity. To be clear, I don’t have much time for politicians whose idea of robust opposition is to accuse the party set up to achieve Scottish independence of being too interested in bringing that about. And if there is no indyref2 this year, and the 2021 Holyrood election becomes a de facto one, then I’ll have no problem at all with the SNP making it the centrepiece of their manifesto. In fact, in those circumstances, nothing else would make sense. But meantime, if anyone is completely obsessed about independence it’s the Scottish Tories, who have fought now two elections on the basis of No to indyref2 without giving the slightest indication that they have two policies of their own to rub together. That went well.

Their leadership candidates consist of Ruth Davidson’s serial stand-in Jackson Carlaw – and there’s nothing like politics for familiarity breeding contempt – and Michelle Ballantyne, a woman who has opined that there is no such thing as a bedroom tax; that folks on benefits shouldn’t be able to choose the size of their families; and who could apparently find no credible evidence for the increased use of food banks.

READ MORE: Tory MSP defends views on benefits claimants having children

Meanwhile, Labour in Scotland seem to have spent this last weekend perfecting their party trick of facing at least two ways at once on the constitution. Some want no truck with another referendum, some wouldn’t oppose one if there were three choices rather than two, and some were unable to comment from the depths of the sand in which they had buried their heads. Periodically – ie after any electoral reverse – Labour rediscovers the attraction of federalism, to which the Liberals have long been attached, but whose charms would seem to have eluded most of the rest of the UK. They’re not least lost on Scotland where the result of a system where one federal “partner” consists of 85% of the electorate became all too clear during the Brexit bourach, when the devolved governments couldn’t get a foot in the door let alone a seat at the table.

The LibDems’ Scottish leader, Willie Rennie, boasted at the weekend that, unlike Labour, his party had a clear position on independence. They’re agin it. Quite why Mr Rennie still believes this to be a vote-winner is less than obvious.

Perhaps it would be worth his while revisiting the founding tenets of a party which says it came into existence to “build and safeguard a fair free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality, and community”.

Tell me this and tell me true Willie. Do you believe such a society is more likely to come about in an independent small European nation, or in Tory Britain? Bearing in mind, Willie, that your troops are passionately pro-Europe, and that an unfettered Scotland can elect whichsoever government it fancies in the future. I can pretty well guarantee that won’t be a Liberal one, mind, if you continue to fight tooth and nail against self-determination. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Which is why, so long as opposition parties have some difficulty in deciding whether it’s half past three or Wednesday, vocal opposition to the Government is more likely to come from within its own broad support. Arguments about timing, arguments about priorities, arguments about personnel. This way, at this seminal juncture, madness certainly lies.

On Saturday, in weather that had every self-respecting duck scurrying for shelter, tens of thousands of independence supporters turned out to march through Glasgow. And many commentators took the opportunity to sneer at them from a great height and centrally heated accommodation.

READ MORE: Kirsten Oswald: AUOB march shows indyref2 objections are untenable

All ages, all ethnicities, all believing that if the greatest prize is to be won, then there must be regular evidence that Yes-supporting Scots are passionate about their cause and committed to it fair weather or foul.

I don’t think this is just about waving Saltires at Boris Johnson, whose contempt for Scottish aspirations and indeed the Scottish Government is all too evident. It’s also, not at all unimportantly, about giving supporters the opportunity to make a public demonstration of that commitment and gaining fresh enthusiasm from being with like-minded souls.

To those who say this is the movement preaching to its own converted, I would argue that everyone who marches, everyone who holds local events, everyone who is thinking long and hard about the wider long term campaign, is more than just an occasional foot soldier. The late Margo MacDonald once said that all it would take for Scotland to win independence was for each person already convinced of the merits to bring one other voter on board. That holds good today. Marches are one way of ensuring that keeping the faith is not a lonely business.