THE last few months have been frustrating for all of us, with concerns about Brexit, then Covid and the economic consequences of both still taking up a lot of time and causing a lot of upset. The SNP too have been in a fractious place for all the above reasons, but also because we have not been able to meet in person. So a lot of the party’s discourse has been online and fringe issues and bad actors have been able to distract from the issue that keeps us all together – independence.

We’re not out the woods on Covid, or Brexit, but I think in recent months and weeks we have turned a corner and I detect a new mood in the party. We won, handsomely, the Holyrood election and saw our friends in the Greens make progress too, culminating in a ground-breaking Co-operation Agreement which I think will be a game-changer for Scottish politics, but also for independence too.

We have also seen the choice of two Unions become starker and clearer for the people of Scotland with every day that passes. We have a lot of experience of referendums in Scotland and the contrast between the 2014 and 2016 referendums has continued in the records of our two governments.

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The Scottish Government and our leader Nicola Sturgeon are trusted in a way the UK Government is simply not. Be it Covid, the economy or climate change, NHS or social care, on issue after issue it is clear the people of Scotland trust the Scottish Government and our MSPs to deliver their priorities.

It is equally clear they do not trust the Tories or the UK. On the Covid response, on cutting international aid spending, on the power grab against Holyrood, on the shambles in Afghanistan. Even yesterday it broke a manifesto promise not to raise National Insurance contributions – a poll tax on jobs – hitting those least able to pay to prop up a social care system that will feather bed the already well off. This UK Government is out of step with Scotland. On fisheries, on agriculture, the promises the Tories made have demonstrably not been fulfilled and people have been quietly paying attention.

But as well as all these, there is one issue above all else that I believe will win us independence: getting back into the European Union.

I spent part of last week over in Northern Ireland with our Northern Ireland spokesperson Richard Thomson and it was, as ever in Belfast, an eye-opening trip. The way the Tories, behind all the rhetoric about “the precious Union”, have played fast and loose with peace in Northern Ireland actually staggers me. Mr Johnson has done absolutely everything he could to destroy his own and the UK’s credibility.

First, he trashed Mrs May’s deal, then promised he had a deal of his own, then when it became apparent he did not pretended it didn’t matter, then when the sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland became apparent pretended it didn’t exist. The Northern Ireland Secretary then trashed the image of the UK in a really significant way by suggesting the UK would resile from solemn international treaty commitments “in a limited and specific way” as if that somehow made it OK. Risible.

The implications of Brexit are becoming clearer and clearer and while the Tories have managed to hide some of it with Covid, that won’t last. Every country has had to live through Covid, only the UK inflicted Brexit on us in addition.

Brexit is not an issue we can vote out at the next election, it is a permanent structural change to how the UK will operate and interact with the world. It leaves the UK poorer, meaner, more isolated and less secure. It limits the life chances of the next generation through the loss of programmes like Erasmus and other student exchanges and takes away our rights to live work study or retire anywhere across the EU.

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For nothing. Well, perhaps not nothing, the former cricketer Ian Botham, who happily admits he knows nothing about trade deals, has picked up a new role as UK trade envoy. Again, it would be laughable except it is all happening while people are desperately worried about their future.

So we have the answer – an independent Scotland getting back into the EU will put rocket boosters on our post-Covid recovery, will allow us to work in concert with like-minded countries to common challenges and play our part in the wider world we will always be denied if we allow the UK to speak for us.

I am privileged to be foreign affairs spokesperson for the SNP Westminster group and spent 16 years in the European Parliament. Scotland in the world will be at the epicentre of the independence debate and I relish helping build that case and presenting it at home and abroad.

It has been a frustrating time but Scottish politics is about to get a whole lot more interesting.