ALEX Salmond’s memorial service was a thoroughly fitting tribute to the man who led Scotland to the brink of independence – a feat which alone makes him unquestionably the most significant political figure modern Scotland has yet produced.

A crowd several hundred strong turned out in Edinburgh’s High Street to mark the occasion and pay their own respects. Sadly, a couple of dafties in among them thought it appropriate to shout insults at the First Minister as he arrived. Their actions were rightly condemned at the time and very widely afterwards.

As well as allowing people to remember Alex as they would wish, the service itself has prompted reflection on much about where our movement stands and how it can move forward.

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It is worth acknowledging the frustration that is clearly felt over a lack of progress towards our shared goal of independence, and how, with a Holyrood election no more than a few months away, political momentum might be rebuilt.

It’s also worth acknowledging what the strategy of the Alex Salmond-led SNP to achieving independence through devolution actually was and how little it has changed over the years.

It was his personal authority that was key to persuading the SNP as a whole to get behind that strategy, but it was far from universally accepted by the pre-1997 fundamentalists of the day.

Their argument ran something like this: Stung by the debacle of 1979, they viewed devolution as a “Unionist trap”, which Labour couldn’t be trusted to deliver even if they ever managed to dislodge the Tories from Downing Street.

If a devolved parliament were to become a prospect, campaigning for it – never mind taking seats in it once it was there – would mean acknowledging Westminster’s claim to sovereignty.

This, they argued would risk fatally compromising some of the key arguments thought to be necessary for winning independence. They thought that the route to independence was simple and direct.

All that was needed was to confront a UK Government with a majority of SNP MPs elected on possibly no more than 40% of the vote, because surely, any prime minister would then just roll over and recognise what was clearly the will of the people.

This approach had some obvious problems. Firstly, there was the question of what to do next if the prime minister of the day simply congratulated the SNP on its success and then ignored the result.

Perhaps more importantly, there was also the small matter of what the rest of non-SNP voting Scotland might have had to say about any of this if they were in the majority in terms of votes cast.

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The bigger political problem though was that, as much as that approach might have warmed the cockles of some SNP hearts, it was far removed from the political reality of where the majority of Scottish voters were at the time. Alex understood that as well as anyone.

While he self-evidently wanted independence as quickly and directly as possible, he also knew instinctively that despite the wounds caused by the events of 1979, the most likely way to get to independence was still through using a Scottish Parliament as a stepping stone along the way.

He knew perfectly well that while the constitutional debate ran on SNP petrol, Scots were highly unlikely to ever make a straight leap from the old status quo directly to independence.

He also saw that while a devolved parliament could help deliver a referendum, an SNP-led government demonstrating that Scotland could run devolved matters effectively could go a long way to building the confidence of the Scottish people to eventually go all the way.

A key moment in delivering this change in approach came during the “Great Debate” in 1995 between himself and George Robertson, which gave Alex a chance to set out his emerging strategy with crystal clarity.

While his first preference was for independence, he said, if the SNP he led did not win the 1997 election with an independence mandate, then the party would contest any future elections for a Scottish Parliament on a platform of taking that Parliament on to independence.

Following the 1999 election, which established the SNP as the official opposition, the party embraced the idea of using a pre-legislative referendum as the route to independence rather than claiming a majority of MPs or MSPs as the mandate to negotiate first. And with that, the SNP was set on the strategic course that it has largely followed ever since.

In a nutshell, then: win elections; take power in government in Edinburgh; govern well; build and maintain public confidence; show the limits of devolution; highlight the advantages which would come with independence; win consistent public majority support for independence; find a way to reflect that majority in a vote to be held for that purpose, and in doing so, win the internal legitimacy within Scotland needed to deliver independence in a lawful way which also secures the recognition of the international community.

That is the path we have followed, one designed by Alex.

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There may be nuances and strands and actions which can be added to that, and there will unquestionably be differences of opinion over its recent execution. But fundamentally, it was and remains a sound strategy which no-one – dare I say it not even Alex himself – has yet managed to improve on.

As I’ve said before in these pages, I’m more interested in grappling with the future than in contesting the past. But surely, when it comes to independence, the only concern that is worth spending time on for those of us who want that outcome is how we can convince the greatest number of people in the shortest possible space of time to join us on that journey?

Whatever other wheezes people try to come up with, there’s no way to independence without building support beyond current levels and winning popular consent. While there’s no harm in trying to think things through afresh, any “plan” which fails to recognise that reality will serve as no kind of plan at all.

Our first goal must be to again secure a majority of political representatives who favour independence built on that growing public support. Then we can begin the debate on how we deal with Westminster denial and intransigence.

As Alex might have said, “but me no buts!”