Between ten and five years ago, specifically in the light of Brexit, it was not in the least unusual for Scottish Independence supporters to discuss a declaration of Independence as the way forward. Debate more often centred on who should make the declaration – the Scottish parliament or some form of national convention or assembly. Very few Independence supporters considered the idea outrageous.

On the day that the UK left the European Union, contrary to the referendum vote of every region in Scotland, Sturgeon called a set piece speech and summoned the whole SNP party hierarchy to be there, as were all the Scottish and UK media. Nobody knew what she was going to say. The belief she may be about to declare Independence, or give an imminent date for it, was widely shared.

In the event, to everyone’s great puzzlement, she said nothing meaningful at all and made no effort to make the break with the EU a decisive moment in taking forward Scotland’s Independence.

In 2020 I stood for President of the SNP and my published manifesto included this passage:

As I was a British diplomat for over 20 years, including six years as a member of the Senior Management Structure of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I can assure you that MI5, GCHQ and the other organs of the UK security state are targeted on us. Scottish Independence supporters are rightly perceived as the biggest threat to the UK state.

My intention is to ensure that we are indeed the biggest threat to the UK state. Anybody who believes that the security services are not already targeted on us is a fool. The security services would not be doing their declared job otherwise. This new legislation is a threat to us. Remember Pat Finucane. Remember David Kelly. Above all, remember Willie McRae.

All the more reason to strike now for Independence and get out of the UK.

Let us use the economic powers of an independent nation to build a fair and just society with no billionaires, no foodbanks and no children living in poverty. Let us build a nation with a foreign policy not dictated by the interests of the USA, dedicated to human rights, international development and support for the United Nations.

Let us move quickly to secure an Independent Scotland. Let our descendants be proud of us.

Nobody accused me of being some kind of unrepresentative outsider. The SNP leadership were so panicked that, the day before nominations closed, the sitting President was told he was retiring and being replaced by the extremely popular Mike Russell MP as the party establishment candidate.

Voting was restricted to Conference delegates, where the party leadership had a huge payroll vote. Even so I came second out of four candidates, with 25% in the final round.

In those days we had AUOB marches for Independence of hundreds of thousands of people. One in Edinburgh I timed as taking three hours to go past. We had marches which, as a percentage of Scotland’s population, were bigger than the equivalent two million person march in London against the Iraq war.

It says a very great deal about how far the Independence movement has come – and all of it downhill – that my article last week caused pearl clutching and fainting fits in the Independence movement, for daring to suggest that Scotland should announce that it will declare Independence if Westminster continues to block a referendum.

The SNP leadership aligned newspaper, the National, even accused me – on its front page, no less – of aiming to start a war with the UK.

Nicola Sturgeon had never been on a single one of those AUOB marches. We were told that, as First Minister, it would be too divisive for her to attend Independence marches.

It was, it transpired, not too divisive for her to attend trans rights events and attempt to push extreme and uncompromising trans rights legislation through the Scottish parliament that went way beyond what public opinion would currently bear. It was not too divisive for her to attempt to abolish juries in sexual assault cases.

Sturgeon led the SNP down a cul de sac marked “identity politics” and left it there. Naturally, anyone who queried this was a misogynist.

Remember, I was never an opponent of the gender reforms. I thought they could have been improved, notably by Michelle Thomson’s amendments. But I was never against them. What I was entirely against was the prioritisation of this issue over Independence. The debate should have been left until after Independence. An independent Scotland could sort out these issues on its own terms.

Instead the issue was used deliberately and entirely successfully to split the Independence movement.

The SNP is still in the identity politics cul de sac.

The SNP is now absolutely wedded, as a matter of doctrine, to staying loyal to UK domestic legislation. That course was set by Sturgeon; the Scottish government brought a case for an Independence referendum to the London Supreme Court in the certain knowledge they would lose and deliberately arguing the case in a way that was bound to lose.

The Lord Advocate even stated in terms on behalf og the Scottish Government the British nationalist doctrine that Scotland had permanently ceased to exist on the coming into force of the Treaty of Union.

The SNP of Sturgeon, Humza and Swinney is the only instance in post 1918 world history of an Independence movement which does not advance its case for national self-determination as a right in international law.  It really is.

The notion of an Independence party which swears unshakeable allegiance to the legal system and political diktats of its occupying power is so obviously risible, it astonishes me, truly genuinely astounds me, that some people still do not see it.

The harsh truth is this. Independence for Scotland will only happen against the opposition of the UK government and by doing things which UK law and its Supreme Court consider illegal.

The enacting of Independence itself will – as the UK Government explicitly stated in its intervention in the Kosovo ICJ hearing – by definition almost always be illegal in terms of the legislation of the stated being seceded from. But as the UK also stated, that is not a determining factor.

By abandoning the possibility of disobedience to the UK state, the SNP has doomed itself to waiting for London agreement which will never, ever come. London is highly dependent on Scottish resources. It needs the UK to stay together to retain its permanent member status at the United Nations. It is never going to agree to lose Scotland.

My own view is that the SNP leadership is riddled with MI5 agents, and that the rest are careerists who love the big fat pay packets they get from their privileged position as administrators within the British state. They will never risk all their personal material success for Independence. Their unswerving allegiance to the laws of the UK state is reinforced by their extremely well-feathered position within it.

Their plan for achieving Independence always boils down to this; if you vote us into our highly paid jobs again, we will actually do something about Independence this time. This time. This time. This time. This time. This time. Astonishingly, decent well motivated Independence supporters still fall for it.

In 2014, at the start of the referendum campaign, support for Independence was somewhere between 29 and 32%. That is why Cameron agreed to the referendum – he thought the result would kill off Independence. Over several months of campaigning support leapt and finished at 45% – despite massive media bias against us, on an incredible scale, in a referendum which met no international standards.

Since then, nothing has happened. Alex Salmond resigned, Nicola Sturgeon took over and she deliberately took all momentum out of Independence campaigning.

This was Sturgeon’s speech at the Aberdeen conference in 2015. Members failed to grasp the import of what she was saying:

I don’t just want to win the votes of independence supporters. I want to inspire people who voted No last year to vote SNP too. I want them to vote SNP because they know we are the best party, with the best ideas and the best people to lead Scotland forward. Everyone, from the strongest supporter of independence to the stoutest advocate of the Union, has the right to know we will continue to govern well with the powers we have at any given time.

Independence support has gone up very slightly over the 12 years since the referendum and now hovers around or just over 50%. Nothing has been done to replicate the months of campaigning, enthusiasm and hope which permanently raised support in a 20% step change during the referendum campaign.

If you do nothing, nothing happens.

The SNP has done nothing. It almost never mentions Independence outside elections. SNP MPs never participate in Westminster by saying how the subject under debate will be handled in a post Independence Scotland; they operate entirely within the UK framework. At Holyrood, if the word Independence is ever heard, other than in a taunt from a Unionist MSP, it is a certain sign that an election is shortly pending.

You cannot increase active popular support for an event which its own supposed advocates accept is subject to a veto by a power you cannot control, and which is determined permanently to veto.

“Sign up to surrender to Westminster” is not an inspiring slogan.

I sympathise greatly with those, like my good friend Robin McAlpine who have been so disillusioned and demoralised by the SNP that they have tipped into the slough of despond and – ironically – joined the ranks of the very gradualists they despise, because they cannot see a way out.

Momentum is important in politics. If you accept to stay stuck behind a barrier you will never achieve momentum. The only way forward is to say that the people of Scotland will refuse to be bound by the laws of the UK state if they offer no democratic option for Scotland to leave the union.

That is the only effective pressure Scotland can bring. My own proposed solution remains to threaten to declare Independence unilaterally if London does not agree a proper, international standard referendum subject to international norms on  media, franchise, vote security etc. And then to declare Independence if our demand for a referendum is not met.

This last week I have heard other proposals to defy London – holding an “illegal” referendum, ways of withholding revenue, ceasing government cooperation in various areas. They are all worth exploring.

Support for Independence will leap up another step change when we actually do something about it. Leadership sweeps people along with it. No country which ever became Independent did not have a substantial number of sceptics among its own population. History shows us that sentiment soon dies following Independence.

You will look very hard indeed for an example of any country that went Independent and then wanted to go back.

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, if taken at the flood, must lead on to success. That remains today a crucial insight. Momentum is vital and to build momentum you have to surge forward.

It is equally true that stagnant water starts to stink. That is the lesson the Scottish Independence Movement must learn from the dead end of the Sturgeon years and from what then happened to internal governance and probity in the SNP. The answer is to abjure stagnation and to embrace the urgent need to move forward.

No nation ever achieved Independence without leaps of faith and acts of courage. I am sorry if that shocks people. There is no safe, agreed path to Independence, and never will be. The Independence movement needs to shake the parasites who hold us back.

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