Revealed: Sturgeon’s new plan to win indyref2

New referendum drive to start on Friday

Wooing No voters key part of strategy

Tough questions on economy to be tackled head-on

NICOLA Sturgeon is to launch the SNP’s long-awaited “summer initiative” on independence with a hard-nosed look at where the Yes side must improve to win next time. The First Minister will start the “national conversation” – intended to woo No voters – in Stirling this week, at an away-day with her MSPs, MPs and MEPs.

The move delivers a pledge Sturgeon made in her speech to the SNP conference in March.

Describing the need to convince No voters to switch sides, she said: “This summer the SNP will embark on a new initiative to build support for independence.

“We will listen to what you have to say. We will hear your concerns and address your questions – and in the process, we will be prepared to challenge some of our own answers.”

The initiative was delayed after the Brexit vote in June, but will now be launched on Friday, just before Holyrood returns from summer recess.

Opposition MSPs urged Sturgeon to axe the plan and focus on “bread and butter issues”.

A source close to the First Minister said: “It’s going to be about engaging with the public and taking their views. It will be a listening exercise.

“It’s the first stage in gathering people’s independence views, what works for them and what doesn’t, benefits and perceived difficulties.”

The source said the initiative would look at how spending priorities could change after independence using future North Sea oil revenue and money saved from scrapping Trident.

However, it would also consider the tougher questions facing the Yes movement, including the perceived weaknesses in 2014 around the currency, economic growth and the deficit.

Last week, the Scottish Government’s own GERS figures showed public spending in Scotland was £14.8 billion more than was raised in tax in 2015-16 because of the oil price collapse.

The deficit, equivalent to 9.5 per cent of Scottish GDP, was higher even than Greece’s 7.2 per cent deficit.

Sturgeon insisted the Scottish economy remained on firm foundations and GERS did not represent the “day one” of a future independent Scotland, as that would depend on a host of financial negotiations with the rest of the UK.

The initiative is also expected to include an appeal to experts and academics to become involved with shaping the debate on independence as part of a broad “Team Scotland”. The exercise will be “public facing” rather than directed at SNP members.

Unlike previous “national conversations” designed to shift opinion before the last referendum, the current initiative will be paid for from party funds, not the public purse.

The source added: “We have to update the case for independence of 2014, most obviously because of Brexit.

“We can’t just dust off the last White Paper. If there is to be a second referendum, we need to build the case for it.”

The “initiative” idea was inserted in Sturgeon’s speech the night before she gave it at the suggestion of her special adviser Noel Dolan as an “applause point”, and the SNP leadership did not anticipate the ecstatic response it received.

Party insiders also admit that, before Brexit, the exercise was intended to occupy the SNP’s 115,000 members, as there seemed no chance of indyref2 for at least five years. However, Brexit changed that, suddenly making another referendum “highly likely” according to Sturgeon, and so the summer initiative has taken on a far greater significance.

Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson urged Sturgeon to scrap the “unwanted” scheme and accused her of breaking a pledge not to pursue indyref2 without an upturn in public support. “The SNP has a choice – to be Scotland’s builders or Scotland’s wreckers. To look to the future, or to take us back to the battles of the past. It is high time we had a Scottish Government that acted for all of us, not just its own narrow interests.”

A Scottish Labour spokesman said: “With so many challenges facing Scotland – the attainment gap in classrooms, the huge deficit exposed by GERS, lack of access to affordable childcare and the link between poverty and illhealth – it’s time for the SNP Government to focus on the bread and butter issues.”

The SNP initiative is the latest in a series of recent Yes campaign revivals. The Scottish Independence Convention announced last week it was “getting the band back together” with a social meeting in Glasgow on September 18, followed by a more formal conference in January.

A grass-roots Yes Movement rally is also planned at Glasgow Green on the second anniversary of the referendum, and the Radical Independence Campaign is about to hold a series of assemblies.

Convention supporter and SNP MP Tommy Sheppard said: “The name of the game is dialogue. We need to have a big conversation in this country and the people who voted Yes have to talk to the people who voted No and find out the constitutional options for this country.

“June 23 changed things. Things are not as they were. We can now engage with layers of opinion in Scotland we thought had maybe been closed off.”

WHEN Nicola Sturgeon launches the SNP’s new drive for independence this week, it would be best not to dwell on the seasonal aspect. Knocked off course by Brexit and with autumn in the air, the party’s long-awaited “summer initiative” is already a misnomer.

But what matters is not the name, but the substance of the event. It will not be a straightforward or comfortable occasion. It is, in effect, the start of the post-mortem the SNP has put off for two years.

Dazed by loss in September 2014, elated by a membership spike, absorbed by a change of leader, two elections and the EU referendum, there has been little space to conduct it until now.

Why did Yes lose? Why did No prevail? Was it the economy, the currency, pensions?

And as it asks those questions, it is also thinking about the ones that follow.

What to do differently next time? What would convince a No voter to choose Yes? Has Brexit brought independence closer or will its slippery complexity make it harder?

As supporters of independence, we applaud these moves. Deal with the hard questions from the get-go – win minds, and the hearts will follow.

At Westminster, SNP MPs are already examining options for the currency of an independent Scotland.

Angus Robertson says the Yes movement must improve its offer on currency and pensions.

Tommy Sheppard says Scotland’s future is in the hands of No voters: the 45 per cent aren’t going away but nor are they enough, so No voters must be systematically won over.

That won’t happen by putting a fresh cover on the prospectus that failed last time.

There needs to be a fresher, more candid approach. The First Minster’s new drive seems to be rightly following that path.

Announcing the initiative in March, the First Minister said she had not wavered in her belief that independence was a “beautiful dream”, a belief this paper shares, but she was also blunt about past arguments not being “compelling enough” to convince most of the country.

This week, as she addresses that, the Unionist parties will doubtless accuse her of neglecting the basics of good government and retreating to a constitutional comfort zone. Let them carp.

The dream remains a beautiful one, and she should follow it however difficult the path.