Here's what the next independence white paper must set out

It began with the SNP conference. While the views of party members have been actively sought since the General Election, this was still the first opportunity to gather and get to grips with the public’s verdict on how they’ve seen us of late.

And having done so, there can be no doubting the resolve of those present to get on with the task of rebuilding our party and its relationship with the people of Scotland.

The week continued with Finance Secretary Shona Robison setting out the Scottish Government’s future spending plans. In doing so, she laid bare the forthcoming impact of UK Labour austerity from what Rachel Reeves herself is trailing as a “painful” October Budget, even if Labour’s Scottish branch managers have yet to read that memo – far less understand it.

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And this will be rounded off with the First Minister setting out a Programme for Government in Scotland which will undoubtedly be curtailed in its scope, even if not ambition, by intensified Westminster austerity and the direct consequences which feed through to Holyrood from a devolution financial settlement endorsed by every single Unionist party.

As the First Minister says, this means Scotland’s government will need to work “smarter and harder” than ever before. And the message is clear that this also applies if we are to rebuild the confidence that people in Scotland have in the Scottish Government when it comes to delivery and outcomes.

It was far more straightforward in the past to deliver key infrastructure projects and fairer pay settlements, as well as game-changing investments in our social fabric like the Scottish Child Payment and free childcare. And with it, those circumstances made it easier to point to what had been achieved under devolution, and to invite people to consider what more might be achievable under independence.

Delegates during the SNP annual national conference at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire)

So, if it’s now going to be harder over the piece to deliver policies under devolution that point the way to how much better a fully independent government could achieve, what then of how we build the refreshed case for independence?

Because it needs doing. While turnout was down across the board at the General Election, it’s clear that lots of independence-supporting voters opted to back Labour rather than the SNP or even other parties of independence.

Those voters certainly didn’t do that because they thought Labour were a better bet to deliver independence.

So, it’s time to confront the hard truth that independence won’t be happening until and unless there’s a sustained majority in favour who also see it as a priority as a means of delivering a better Scotland, rather than as a “nice to have” at some point that’s (always) in the future.

In getting there, we also need to be able to earn a hearing once again from those Scots who don’t want independence now, or perhaps even at all.

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Not just because that’s a good and necessary thing for any outward-looking party to do, but also because that’s the only group other than first-time voters which can be persuaded to take independence support to the levels needed for it to progress.

That will only come by doing well in government and being seen as delivering on their priorities too. And once we’ve earned that hearing, we need to be talking not about the minutiae of getting to independence, but instead about what we’d like to be doing with independence once we’ve got it, and why that can represent a better future than what they already know will be the outcome of continued Westminster rule.

And here’s where the whole movement has a role. I know what kind of independence I want to see, and the social democratic policies needed to deliver those outcomes, some of which I’ll perhaps return to in future columns.

But just as we don’t expect Unionism to have a single, all-encompassing view of what a future UK might look like, surely it is just as unrealistic to expect everyone backing independence to row in behind a single view of the policies an independent Scotland should set out to enact?

John Swinney and Stephen Flynn at the SNP conference in Edinburgh (Image: Lesley Martin)

In creating a future vision for Scotland, there’s certainly got to be a clear social democratic SNP vision, but there’s also got to be room for a Green vision; a Labour vision; a liberal vision and, yes, a centre-right vision too.

So here’s an idea to start off with. When the time comes for another white paper on independence, let’s make sure that it’s about what the institutions of government in an independent Scotland would look like on day one and how they would relate to the people of Scotland and the rest of the world, and nothing more.

In other words, make it solely about what the structure of Government would look like, and leave the task of saying what could then be done with that to those who would aspire to run or influence that independent government, so they can each set out for themselves what they would like to do with that opportunity if people vote for it.

Because independence by itself changes nothing, except for giving us the power to change everything. Only by helping more people to understand that and by encouraging them to debate over and grab hold of the possibilities it offers can support for independence begin to reach the levels that we’d like to see.