THERE is a growing debate inside the national movement over the usefulness of SNP MPs continuing to attend the damp, cavernous halls of the Palace of Westminster, where they are treated with obvious contempt and where they spend their time banging heads against a very big metaphorical brick wall.

Can anything useful further be gained from having the party’s 45 MPs make the weekly trek down to London, apart from pocketing the £81,932 annual salary each Member of Parliament is due?

Support for parliamentary abstentionism is growing among frustrated indy supporters, especially outside the SNP itself. Not everyone is convinced. Take the historian Ewan Gibbs, who has made the journey from much-expelled Labour member to critical Yes supporter. Ewan has the great merit of thinking for himself. Recently he tweeted: “… those now advocating SNP MPs don’t take their seat miss how fundamentally defensive and small c conservative support for independence is to most SNP voters.”

I’ll come to the alleged conservatism of pro-indy voters in a moment. But clearly Ewan believes that anything as radical as abstentionism would be a turn-off for most conventional indy supporters. Presumably he thinks these voters expect SNP and Green MPs to earn their salary in the conventional manner by representing them in a visible way at the Palace of Westminster. To propose abstentionism (especially out of the political blue) is to invite the electorate to seek someone else to represent them.

READ MORE: Massive fall in SNP tweets about independence after election

On one level, I think Ewan is perfectly correct: an abrupt move to abstentionism, without political preparation, would indeed appear outlandish. One can see the tabloid headlines already: “SNP MPs take the money but refuse the graft,” etc, etc.

But nobody responsible is proposing that SNP or Alba MPs simply quit Westminster tomorrow. What is being raised – sensibly in my opinion – is the long-term efficacy for the independence movement of the full complement of SNP MPs going down to London every week only to be comprehensively and humiliatingly ignored. The definition of madness is repeating the same act over and over, hoping the outcome will be different.

The SNP have been represented at Westminster continuously since 1974, a period of 47 years. The party’s MPs have certainly given Scotland a voice as a distinct nation, even if the effect is muted by the pro-Union media, including the BBC. But overall, I can’t see any evidence that having 45 SNP MPs has magnified the SNP’s parliamentary voice by 45 times the impact it had when, say, Winnie Ewing or Margo MacDonald was the party’s sole parliamentary representative.

Indeed, as I saw first-hand when I was an MP, the result of having huge numbers of parliamentarians in London is a sudden obsession with office space, plus the hiring of large numbers of ambitious staffers. The latter are paid from the SNP’s parliamentary “short money” (state subsidy) currently worth £1,110,864 annually. In other words, increasing the scale of SNP representation equals a growth in bureaucracy, not in political effectiveness.

On the contrary, regardless of party, long-sitting MPs are seduced by the club-like atmosphere and public school deference of the Commons. Forget the theatricality of the debating chamber. MPs get very chummy serving on select committees and going on the inevitable international “fact-finding” jaunts. And as always, peer group pressure and peer group valuation produce insidious results. A couple of invitations to Nato HQ or a lunch with the chief of the defence staff, and even SNP unilateralists start spouting Cold War bilge or think they are now global security experts.

The National:

What is the best way to prevent SNP MPs going native? Is outright abstentionism the answer? No: I believe there are obvious advantages to having a forward base in enemy territory.

HAVING eyes and ears at Westminster gives advance warning of what the government of the day is up to. Having the right to speak in debates gives Scotland a direct voice, even if it is constrained by parliamentary rules – such as being relegated to contributing only after the bulk of Tory and Labour MPs (and long-forgotten Privy Councillors) have had their say.

Besides, capturing the majority of constituency seats at a General Election is an excellent way of registering popular support for independence.

However, none of these political advantages means you need to have 45 (or whatever) MPs trundling up and down to London each week. In fact, when I was elected in 2015, the SNP group took the sensible decision that we would draw up a rota whereby only a few MPs would be in attendance each week while the rest of us stayed home to campaign for independence on a systematic, permanent basis. At that point we had 56 MPs out of Scotland’s 59. That’s 56 local offices equipped with a paid staff. That was a Yes army if ever there was one.

Alas, this plan was never implemented because the MPs were left to do their own thing by a parliamentary leadership more concerned with debating than campaigning. The plan would only have worked if SNP MPs had been co-ordinated and directed centrally, with a weekly campaign plan - including points to raise in local newspaper columns, leaflets for weekend members’ activities, and mass canvassing in selected towns.

But that would have meant actually campaigning for independence rather being subsumed into the British parliamentary pantomime.

As proof, consider what has happened to the two Alba MPs, Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey, since they left the SNP. Both were removed from Westminster select committees by the SNP. This had the fortuitous result that both can spend more time making strategic interventions at Westminster plus having extra campaign time in Scotland.

READ MORE: Will Macpherson's appointment to economic group really sway voters?

They now operate a week-about attendance rota in London. An old pro, MacAskill has garnered almost as much media attention as the whole remaining SNP group, with interventions on everything from the failings of the CalMac ferries to reforming the Scottish legal system.

Here’s my point: SNP MPs should be at Westminster to fight a guerrilla campaign for independence, or they shouldn’t be there at all. They are not sent there to be a permanent fixture. Their primary allegiance is to the Scottish people. Which means they should rank obedience to rigid Westminster parliamentary rules well below serving Scotland’s voters. If Westminster sets itself against Scotland’s right to choose its own political destiny, then SNP MPs should be willing to disrupt the UK Parliament till that right is recognised.

But won’t this alienate Scottish voters? Lefty historian Ewan Gibbs believes the Scottish electorate – particularly SNP voters – are too conservative and defensive to accept such parliamentary shenanigans. Yet these same voters came close to exploding the British state in 2014. The Scottish electorate is the most social democratic in Europe, despite 40 years of neoliberal propaganda.

Of course, Ewan thinks fighting for Scottish independence is a retreat from British socialism, and so must be conservative by definition.

On the contrary, destroying the uber-reactionary Unionist state is the only route to getting socialism anywhere in the British Isles.

Abstaining from Westminster is a last resort. Let’s start by forcing Westminster to recognise Scotland’s right to self-determination. And use the bulk of our MPs’ time staying home campaigning for a solid indy majority.