IT doesn’t seem particularly long ago that SNP MPs and MSPs were regularly chastised as resembling robotic clones so desperately did they cling to the party line on every issue imaginable. If only that was still true in these more turbulent times.

These days it seems we can hardly go through a week before the party is thrust into some new, self-inflicted crisis and figures among the ranks of elected members are queuing up to point the finger of blame, usually at each other.

Most recently it was Angus Robertson who thrust himself into the spotlight by agreeing to meet representatives of the Israeli government and then to pose for a dreadfully misconceived publicity picture, which the Israelis concerned quickly defined as a cosy chat which discussed the urgent need for Hamas to release Israeli hostages.

This, of course, stood in stark contrast to the stance taken by the Scottish Government and any number of SNP members – not least former first minister Humza Yousaf who had family members caught up in the atrocities being carried out by Israel in Gaza. The Scottish Government had voted to demand an immediate ceasefire and spoken out against the horrific aggression being inflicted on innocent Palestinians but that seemed to have been forgotten by senior members.

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The resulting fall-out could have been predicted by even the most dim-witted political commentator. Everyone was dragged in, even the new FM John Swinney who at one point was blamed for ordering the meeting to go ahead before Robertson took the blame in a public apology which was as inevitable as it was damagingly late. And then there was John Mason, but then he should have been booted out years ago.

All this was just the latest in quite a long line of inexplicable acts of self-immolation that the SNP have been indulging in lately. There was Yousaf losing his job for failing to realise that the Greens might be more than just a tad upset at being booted out of government in a senselessly humiliating way.

Even before that, there was an excruciatingly embarrassing leadership contest which had many SNP members seriously questioning what type of party they had joined.

Let me be honest. I’m an SNP member and supporter. This is the case not just because I firmly believe in Scottish independence, the core belief that until recently glued the disparate elements of the party together. I also thought it was the best party to run Scotland. Not the perfect party – no such thing exists. But better than the greedy and corrupt Tories, better than the arrogant Labour Party, selling out socialism while waiting for Scotland to “come to its senses” after deserting them.

But not just better than the other lot. Actively good, positive and progressive. Scrapping student tuition fees. Opposing Brexit. Making sure NHS prescriptions were free. Mitigating the effects of the bedroom tax. Supporting a woman’s right to choose, even if it stopped short of making abortion legal. Celebrating gay marriage. Defending trans rights against the nonsense being spouted by JK Rowling’s gang, which infected even some of its own members. Tell me, how proud did you feel to live in a country where the residents of a Glasgow street could join together to protect immigrants from deportation at the hands of Home Office dunderheads?

I don’t have much time for those who look at those achievements and whine about the party’s failure to move us closer to independence.

It was the Tories and Labour who put the block on that progress. Put the blame where it deserves to go. Did you honestly think breaking up the British state would be simply a matter of asking for another referendum?

I’m not one of those who urge the SNP to concentrate exclusively on the “important issues” – code for independence and independence alone – and abandon all those difficult discussions on the values on which we want to build the new, independent country on. All the candidates in the eye-opening leadership debate which followed Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation supported independence but there were some I would not have wanted in charge of the country because they didn’t represent the values I want an independent Scotland to champion.

I still believe that the SNP are not just the best of the available options to form the next Scottish Government but that they have the ideas and policies to steer Scotland in the right direction and the values to both encourage new converts to the independence cause and create the kind of country independence would help us create.

It’s time for the SNP to demonstrate that they believe it too.

Almost all the recent crises demonstrate the same sort of woolly thinking and poor communication which is becoming a party hallmark.

The Humza leadership farce could have been avoided by an open, frank and honest discussion with the Greens about the future of the Bute House Agreement. That party was, after all, going to have its own vote on the matter. I don’t know who advised Yousaf to adopt the damaging course of action on which he embarked – accounts seem to differ – but it was obviously not wise counsel.

Similarly, having embraced trans rights so positively, it was dumb to put up no coherent arguments against those who used misguided arguments to undermine that cause. What was needed was a united front on the need for gender recognition changes adopted all over Europe.

Instead the SNP angered those who opposed the legislation it had proposed in the first place and infuriated those who doubted the party’s commitment to supporting it.

Having hit the Unionist parties’ intransigence on the question of independence and a second referendum, the SNP could and should have put the blame for the stalemate where it properly belongs and fashioned a campaign properly galvanising the hope and optimism around independence which enveloped the country in 2014.

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When right-wing thugs indulged in racist rhetoric and violence in England, the Scottish Government could and should have celebrated the many and glorious benefits immigrants have brought to this country and emphasised they are welcome here in the manner of an inspiring National “Welcome to Scotland” front page in November 2015.

The new Kamala Harris TV campaign ad unveiled this week stands as a testament to the power of hope, optimism and joy in the face of Donald Trump’s hate and divisiveness. To a thrilling soundtrack of Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar, Harris stakes her claim to the future by defining the America they believe can be forged anew. This is not a campaign ad which foregrounds policies and statistics, important as these can be in winning voters and changing lives.

Nor is it a campaign which simply puts forward a sensible alternative to Trump. Instead it tears into everything that stinks about Make America Great Again rhetoric in a furious yet joyous reclamation of the values which truly contribute to their country’s greatness rather than those which represent a return to the shameful days of the past and the terrible, criminal days of Trump in the White House.

Back in this country, we are entering a dangerous period. The Labour victory has brought in its wake not the electrifying change it promised but an unveiled attack on devolution and the Scottish Government and a new wave of targeted austerity. And by targeted I mean designed to challenge decisions made by the Scottish Government.

And so we have seen moves to cut arts funding, bring back peak rail fares, remove universal winter payments for pensioners and more … all underlined by the Labour attitude that since they were replaced in Scotland’s affections by the SNP we have somehow gained unfair and unjust advantages over our English neighbours.

Now there are suggestions we need to “talk about” free tuition fees, universal benefits and free NHS prescription charges, supposedly justified by a desire to redistribute those benefits more fairly rather than the rather less noble truth about its ambition to strip us of the results of the very different political decisions taken at Holyrood. Devolution seems to be all very well as long as it does not give Scotland anything denied to those living elsewhere in the UK, even if the cost of those policies is met entirely within the Scottish budget. A budget, let’s not forget, constrained entirely by Westminster.

Now we’re told that the Scottish Government – and watch, by the way, for new efforts to rebrand that government as the “Scottish executive” to dragoon it back into line – shouldn’t have control over how to spend money now allocated to the new Labour Scottish Secretary for distribution.

And yes it’s going to take more than cool music and emotive television montages to mount an effective defence of democracy and devolution – but the public needs to be coherently informed of the issues at stake and the SNP needs to devise an inspirational and galvanising communications strategy to win public support both for that defence and for the transformative power of independence to create a country that truly reflects the values, dreams and ambitions of those living here.

No-one else is going to do it and there are many forces actively engaged in holding us back.

Don’t let them win.