Shortcuts and impatience will not win independence

Respectful persuasion is how to build our case

IHAVE believed in, and campaigned for, independence for all my adult life. I joined the SNP as a teenager and, like many others, worked hard to keep the cause alive throughout the 1980s when independence seemed a very distant dream.

Support for independence is clearly far higher now. It is also more essential and urgent than ever before.

That’s because the UK economic model has failed – it’s led to low and stagnant wages, low living standards, high inequality and an extraordinary and unstable concentration on London as the engine of UK economic growth.

The UK has now decided to leave the European Union, piling on more economic misery.

But it’s not just Brexit, disastrous though that is for living standards, it is the fact that the Tories opted for a hard Brexit, taking the UK and Scotland out of the huge Single Market and Customs Union as well as the EU.

The lost economic output has wiped billions from the economy – and money that would have been available for public services such as the NHS.

Incredibly ,Keir Starmer’s Labour Party are committed to maintaining that hard Brexit. That means they are fully signed up to low economic growth and further hits to living standards. Rather than offering change they are locking Scotland into that failed economic model.

Labour are hard-core Brexiteers and a hard-core anti-independence party.

In the meantime when we look at comparable independent countries to

Scotland, like Ireland and Denmark, we see they are both wealthier and fairer than the UK.

So with all our resources and talents: why not Scotland?

Given the damage of Westminster control we have a duty to offer the people of Scotland a compelling independence alternative. One that offers real hope and optimism, and that demonstrates a sense of possibility.

This, then, is how we are going to achieve our independence: we must retain above all our faith in the democratic power of the people of Scotland.

I am as impatient as anyone, but it is through respectful persuasion, evidence-building, and unfailing commitment and focus that we will achieve our goal.

The people of Scotland want to hear substance from us, not just process. As a party that believes in the rule of law we can’t ignore the decision of the UK Supreme Court. There are no short-cuts here.

But that must not mean we accept in any way Westminster’s undemocratic blocking of the right of people to choose their own future.

So, trusting in the power of democracy, we will demonstrate good government at Holyrood. Using

We must retain our faith in the democratic power of the Scottish people