JOHN Swinney faces the prospect of a significant grassroots rebellion as he prepares for SNP conference in less than two months’ time.
Despite being backed by 43 local branches, a rebel motion on independence presenting an alternative to the First Minister’s strategy was omitted from the draft agenda for the October gathering.
Swinney wants to make it so that the election of a majority of SNP MSPs at next year’s Holyrood election constitutes a mandate for a second independence referendum.
The rebels put forward a plan to secure a mandate if pro-independence parties secure a majority on the list vote at the 2026 election.
It would be surprising if Swinney expected an SNP majority delivered in less than a year’s time.
While the Labour Government is disastrously unpopular, it cannot be expected that this will mean voters will come flooding back to the SNP.
Some will go to the Greens, some to Alba, some to smaller parties and the unknown quantity of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s nascent political party may further complicate matters.
It would be simpler for Swinney if, after the next election, he was able to turn around to SNP members at the next election and say: “We set our bar for a mandate, we didn’t reach it, so we need to accept the reality that there is no viable political path to independence any time soon.”
Certainly, it seems the SNP have resigned themselves to accepting that Westminster will not grant Scotland another referendum without levels of public support significantly and consistently higher than what they are now.
A point that both Swinney and his predecessor Humza Yousaf have tried to argue is moving away from what they call “process”. It is not about a de facto referendum, running a Scotland United ticket or any other scheme that has been put forward since 2014’s defeat, they say. It is about proving beyond doubt that the majority of Scots want independence and they want it now.
What they do not add is that this is a process which is likely to take years, if not decades.
In the heat of a referendum campaign, you can win people over or lose them much quicker than you can when independence is still an abstract question.
Would I like lobster and caviar or foie gras and wagyu beef for dinner? I could say whichever but it does not matter as I’ll be having neither.
But this won’t do for campaigners. Young and old, seasoned veterans or fresh recruits, all want independence, and they want it now.
Small wonder people are turning to movements such as Liberation Scotland, which will be holding an event at the United Nations in Geneva next month.
The group argues that Scotland was colonised by England through the Acts of Union and that international law will provide a route to self-determination.
This, Liberation Scotland insists, is not a quick fix but a far more reasonable course of action than another letter to Downing Street requesting a second referendum.
Interesting as that may be, it is still a distant prospect when compared with the more immediate possibility that Swinney could soon find his independence strategy torn to shreds by grassroots SNP members.
For that, we need to wait and see what the rebels do next.
