IT has been a real rollercoaster of a campaign for the SNP leadership.

Alongside the expected twists and turns, we have experienced some sudden and discombobulating drops and even moments when our world seemed to be turned upside down. And yet, I can’t shake the belief that this is exactly what the party, and movement, has needed.

To put it another way, as the winds subside, and the last rumble of thunder passes, much of the storm’s pent-up pressure has dissipated. There is a renewed sharpness and freshness in the air once again.

Optimism is my preferred outlook in life, but I am realist enough to know that there are no guarantees of a bright future for either the SNP or the Yes movement.

This new beginning is redolent with possibility, but it is also a time of genuine risk. Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney are a hard act to follow. They have served Scotland well in the most difficult of times and the successes they have worked so hard to deliver cannot be taken for granted. How we respond now, therefore, is of crucial importance.

What has encouraged me most during the campaign is the way the relationships between the three candidates have grown and developed. From some tetchy moments in the first few weeks, we saw by the end of the contest meaningful and detailed policy debate and positive interaction. Positions adopted by each of the candidates have developed, they have learned from each other, even borrowed from each other.

Amidst important differences, what has become clear is that more unites them than divides them and that is vitally important as campaigning turns to governing and a new team is built.

What would I say to them at this point? First, well done. All three have gained in stature and found their groove, and the two front-runners in particular have looked increasingly First Ministerial. That, in itself, is a good outcome.

They each have their strengths and their weaknesses, and these have been there for all to see, and that too is not a bad thing – they enter leadership not as some soaring superstar but more clearly as first among equals.

Second, I would offer them two pieces of advice, words of wisdom that were given to Salmond, Sturgeon and Swinney, and the rest of the team, back in 2005 and which played a fundamental part in shaping the SNP as we took our first steps to electoral success.

The first was “always look beyond the winning post”. It was offered, in part, as an encouragement for us to raise our sights beyond the next days’ headlines, and thus not get too bogged down in things we couldn’t really control. More importantly, though, it was a reminder that winning elections, while important, was never the end in itself.

Winning an election was only the starting point because the true goal was transforming Scotland. That would only come, first, through the patient and difficult task of governing well and, second, by securing the full range of powers of independence.

What was good advice then is certainly worth repeating now. Whoever is elected new SNP leader, I would say to them, don’t let your primary horizon be tomorrow’s headline or next week’s parliamentary debate, important though those are. Instead, keep your eye always on the bigger prize – the elections still to be won, the transformational policies still to be delivered and the independence still to be gained.

Of course, this is easy to say but, given the real pressures of day-to-day governing, difficult to deliver on. The more, therefore, we can have people working for independence outside the hot-house pressures of Holyrood, the better. In days gone by, for example, the SNP’s campaign committee was led very effectively by the Westminster leader – a busy job for sure, but on a different scale than a government minister. A greater role for our MPs in election planning and independence strategising and campaigning would be a positive thing.

The second piece of transformational advice we received in 2005 was that we should seek to build the same sort of relationship with voters as we had with our closest friends and family. Why? Because that meant when tough times came, as they would, and difficult decisions had to be made, people would stick by us because the relationship was built on the rock of mutual respect not the sand of mere political salesmanship.

We all know what this means in terms of our own closest relationships. For them to work, there has to be honesty, humility, a human connection. Political relationships will never be precisely the same, but the fundamentals are not all that different. It means having the wisdom not to bluster, and the humility to be open about the intractability of some problems.

No person, no single political party knows it all. We won’t necessarily have a complete answer right now, but that is life. The world is always full of new problems and challenges and some blows, such as Covid and Brexit, are severe. There will never be a moment when things are perfect. Indeed, it is in the pretence that we can be perfect or make things perfect that we lose something fundamental to our humanity.

Whoever wins the SNP election, they will not have a magic wand, but no one expects them to, except perhaps a few enraged voices on the opposition benches. The standard that the voters set for us is not an impossible one. What matters most is that we work hard, and that we are seen to come to good decisions because of the values we embody, because we listen and hear, and because we are genuinely connected with the people we represent.

For sure, this is difficult in the often binary and unforgiving parliamentary and social media context we face, but these are not the people we need to persuade. In the real world, and in the long term, being honest and realistic is more important than ducking and diving or feeling the need always to be right. That is what matters in relationship building and it is key also to our own overarching task – nation building.

Stephen Noon was chief strategist for Yes Scotland, a senior policy adviser to the First Minister and has begun a PhD research project at the University of Edinburgh looking at Scotland’s political culture