Scotland is not ready for Westminster to refuse a Section 30 order for indyref2

There is a clear mandate, an instruction by the people to proceed with indyref2. The people have spoken but will their call be answered?

Not according to tone-deaf London politicians and their Scottish appendices. Apparently the election was a triumph for the Labour Party although they scored even less than their badly bruised colleagues south of the Border. The Liberals – or as we should learn to call them, Wee Willie Rennie’s LibDems – are celebrating their disappearance as a national party after 150 years while the Tory man in black has been shown the ref’s red card.

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In contrast Alba have no difficulty in conceding defeat or in congratulating our fellow independence supporters. However, unlike the defeated Unionist forces we believe our case will stand the test of time.

Much excitement was provoked at the weekend by Michael Gove’s stumbling and bumbling on the BBC when he apparently said that the UK Government would not contest in court a Scottish Parliament-sponsored referendum. We should not raise our hopes too high.

What he really meant is that he didn’t want to talk about doing that or alternatively that some shadowy proxy grouping would be conjured up to do the legal dirty work – perhaps “BBC Licence Payers for our Glorious Union”.

No-one should be under any illusions. Westminster will not concede a Section 30 referendum nor will they allow a Scottish initiative unless they are carried kicking and screaming to the ballot box.

That is why the campaign to enforce the sovereign will of the Scottish people should be already planned and ready to go. As should the negotiating platform on which our independence will be based.

We are going to face a London veto at some point soon. The political, legislative, legal, diplomatic and international moves should be in train. So should the plans for peaceful mobilisation of the people. The days of SNP leaders sneering at All Under One Banner should be over. The foot soldiers will be needed before long.

Not even the most tartan-tinted spectacled would believe that current SNP answers on the economy, on debt, on borders, on Europe and on currency look convincing or even coherent. Nor are answers likely to come from their Green Party allies.

Slater’s throwaway remark after the ballot that it now might be a good idea to spell out what independence would look like hardly confers confidence that her party has hitherto given the issue more than fleeting attention.

We should look instead at what Gove did in fact say on Sunday. He pointed to the Tory “record performance” and that a majority of constituency votes were cast for Unionist parties. Note he was not able to say party votes because Alba’s modest 2% tally was still enough to send the combined party vote of independistas over the magic mandate of 50%.

He then went on to praise putting the pandemic first and pledged UK co-operation over a range of issues between Scotland’s “two governments” and indeed local government.

TRANSLATED from Gove talk into human speak, he actually meant that Whitehall will systematically undermine the powers of the Scottish Parliament, particularly over capital spending, and the magic money tree will be rolled out for any local authority willing to queue up with their hands out to London.

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So while the Scottish Government is acting “responsibly” and playing the game, Gove and co have already started their corporate campaign to save UK plc. We are in danger of learning another hard truth about our dealings with London and one which was learned by so many countries in the past. If you always play the game then you will always lose. There is no polite way to extract independence from Westminster. Politeness will be interpreted as weakness. Johnson will concede as little as he can get away with and take as much time as he can not to do it.

In these circumstances giving them time before the Section 30 demand lands does not seem like a sensible policy. Johnson will not collapse in a heap as suggested by the SNP before the election.

It might have been different if Alba had been supported in our move to evict 10 Tories from the regional list. However we weren’t and the fig leaf of a Tory “record performance” remains in place. Every independence supporter may come to rue the more than one million wasted votes on the list which allowed Unionists to get back into the Scottish Parliament by the back door.

However, we are where we are and that starting place is still a democratic mandate that requires to be met and a people who are waiting to be led.

But that brings me finally to another strange thing about mandates. They are not static but change over time. Unless you use it then you risk losing it.