The audacity of Nicola Sturgeon’s hope | 9 October 2018

Patience. Pragmatism. Perseverance. Nationalist leaders do not, as a general rule, use such terms to inspire their troops. Not, at any rate, if they think the day of national emancipation is imminent. Yet these were precisely the terms in which Nicola Sturgeon spoke to her party’s conference in Glasgow this week. 

That reflects one of the paradoxes of our time. Politically-speaking it is possible to march closer to independence without actually getting closer to it. Or, to put it another way, the road to independence is shorter now but also littered with more, and larger, obstacles than was the case as recently as 2014. This is the conundrum in which Sturgeon finds herself: the route is simple but the road is not open. 

Brexit, again, makes the political argument for independence simpler while also, as it turns out, making it seem an even more complicated business than it was four years ago when, as you will recall, the majority of Scottish voters concluded that, amongst other considerations, independence was too risky and too freighted with uncertainty to be worth the gamble.