The SNP tell us that independence support is currently at 53%.
They tell us that most Scots want a referendum within the next year:
And we know that it’s absolutely unequivocally possible for the SNP and Greens to trigger a Holyrood election which would serve as a de facto referendum not only within a year, but within weeks. Scots could entirely realistically go to the polls this August or September, or even on the date Nicola Sturgeon promised less than a year ago.
So why are the SNP choosing this of all moments to give up?
When I was a boy at Balbardie Primary School in Bathgate in the mid-70s, football was banned in the playground. Of course we were all fitba-daft laddies, so we sought ways around the prohibition. Occasionally someone would bring in a tennis ball, but those were difficult to control in school shoes and also apt to fly over the wall of the outdoor toilet block if somebody caught one sweetly on the volley.
So most playtimes somebody would produce a tin of Pepsi or Irn-Bru or Cresta, chug the contents, stand the empty container on its end and stomp sharply on it, producing something more akin to an ice-hockey puck that would serve for our kickabout.
But even after being skelped and scudded around a concrete playground into stone walls for 20 minutes, that can was still in better shape at the end of our game than the one the SNP have been kicking down the road since 2016.
The SNP now seem to be involved in some sort of competition where they dare each other to come up with the most blatant insult to their own members and/or the wider independence movement and see just how much they can get people to put up with.
First up was this drivel:
Humza Yousaf is leader of the SNP, a political party whose defining purpose – arguably its SOLE real purpose – is the pursuit of Scottish independence, but his “vision for Scotland” didn’t include a single mention of it.
Instead, Yousaf intends to spend the next three years on “equality”, “opportunity” and “community”, three meaningless buzzwords which every political party on Earth would claim to be in favour of. He might as well have identified his key values as kittens, lollipops and hugs.
Once again, we’re dismayed to report that we called it right. Because last night SNP MSP Mairi McAllan, officially representing the party on Question Time, told a weary audience in Fort William that that was precisely the case.
And readers, if ever a policy has been tested in battle and found wanting, it’s that one.
When Humza Yousaf was campaigning to be elected leader of the SNP, he pledged that he would be not only the First Minister, but also the “First Activist”. It transpired that this in fact meant chapping a few doors in Dundee, just down the road from his home in Broughty Ferry (and on the way to his Glasgow constituency).
But what might a real “First Activist” have done with the position and power?
Wings always likes to correct any inadvertent errors as quickly as possible, so we were pleased to hear from an alert reader with a correction to this morning’s article in which we claimed that “we’re supposed to be less than six months away from a second indyref, but [Humza Yousaf] hasn’t even admitted that that isn’t happening”.
Our reader informed us that they’d actually had some communication with the Scottish Government on that matter, which we’re happy to share with you.
As far as we’re aware this fact has never been formally stated publicly before for some reason. But just in case you were still holding out hopes, now you know.
In fairness, you can’t really accuse them of hiding it any more.
The faint hearts and pension-seekers of the SNP think that their time has come – the moment when the party’s pursuit of independence can be quietly downgraded to a vague long-term aspiration that will ensure their seats on the gravy train for decades.
Starting at noon tomorrow is your very last chance to stop them.
It’s remarkable how openly a certain faction of the SNP is now declaring surrender.
And it’s becoming increasingly clear that the events of the next few days and weeks will not just determine the future of the independence movement, but whether in any meaningful, practical sense it continues to exist at all.
