Sturgeon is right, Scotland sits on the verge of Independence.

Complacency on the part of the nationalists is a danger for their project, however.

Nicola Sturgeon is correct; Scotland has never been so close to the SNP’s goal of independence. The 2014 referendum may have been lost, but Brexit, and rule by Johnson’s incarnation of the Tory party have both angered Scots, and now the pandemic has shown (optically) that the nation is capable of handling a crisis by itself, and has seen far superior leadership from the First Minister as opposed to from the Prime Minister.

Independence won’t be a done deal until it has a true democratic mandate, but the Scottish people (regardless of my own beliefs) have a right to decide their own future in a democratic manner, and if a majority of Scots elect the SNP in the upcoming election then the mandate is clear as it can ever be, and the British government must respect it.

The unionist cause hasn’t got much to offer; Britain is being run as a chumocracy, but none of this takes away from the fact that the SNP aren’t progressives in any real sense. They whip up division through nationalistic rhetoric, something that’s dangerous in any situation, and they have governed with a disregard for civil liberties, and a clear commitment to a neoliberal status quo.

The SNP talk about controlling their own destiny, and seizing control from the UK parliament (a body far too all powerful and centralised beyond belief) while then immediately signing away the ability to transform as a nation over to the banker’s club in Brussels; a laborious endeavour which will see austerity imposed top down onto the Scottish people by the EU commission. Scottish socialists who support independence should remember the SNP can’t create a haven of Scottish socialism if they re-join the EU, a fundamentally neoliberal body.

The thing that the SNP risk is appearing too enthusiastic. There is a split emerging in the party over the when and how regarding independence, and while this goes on, polling shows a majority opposed to an early referendum after the election, and people ranking a plurality of real kitchen table concerns above independence.

The march towards independence in Scotland appears near unstoppable; especially with the current UK government. The stars have aligned and conditions for the SNP politically couldn’t be better. It remains to be seen if anything can blow this momentum off course.

A superior solution would be a federalised system of governance across Britain, spreading out power. With a centralised, useless, power hungry monster of a government in No 10, why wouldn’t Scots look misty eyed towards a split?