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Rory Scothorne is completing a PhD on the relationship between the Scottish radical left and nationalism, and is the co-author of Roch Winds: A Treacherous Guide to the State of Scotland.
In Alex Salmond’s new party, Scotland has produced a bekilted ally of Faragism and the right-wing press.
The creation of the Scottish parliament precipitated the collapse of more radical forms of territorial dissent, while failing to address the problems driving them.
The party has successfully made itself the symbolic expression of almost all of Scotland’s overlapping memories, experiences and anxieties.
The constitutional and political paths to a second referendum are currently blocked.
As the SNP struggles to hold its movement together and exploit unhappiness about Brexit, a broad, disruptive coalition of populists and the left is agitating for a more radical plan for leaving the Union.
Rather than setting itself against Scottish democracy, the party should be fighting to make that terrain its own.
The country’s progressive self-image offers no escape from the tragedy of being a small, deindustrialised nation in a world of big extremes.
The party has finally recognised that the country's political and economic woes flow from the centralised and outmoded British state.
The environmental movement is upholding the Scottish left’s honourable tradition of non-violent direct action.
Brexit and a new Tory government are potentially lethal to the cause of Scottish independence.
