The lessons I learned as a naive former Yesser about the divisions caused ever since indyref

As global political upheaval demands urgent attention, the Scottish election may seem to some a dull background headache. Small stuff, in comparison to USA President Donald Trump’s obvious imperialist impulses, and the fraught, courageous fight for Iranian democracy, amongst much else.

I’m a natural idealist, to the point of being my own worst enemy sometimes. I can’t help but hope, despite contrary evidence, this year might nevertheless see overdue attempts to heal ongoing but unnecessary divisions in Scottish politics. Social cohesion and civil discourse aren’t ‘small stuff.’ Even if they were, as the saying goes, it’s important to sweat it.

If the SNP form another Scottish government in May, they’ll take us limping towards a near quarter-century of the party’s rule by the end of the next parliament. It’s possible Reform may place second, a challenge on many fronts to the SNP’s agenda.

Recent commentary from Tory quarters argues there’s cynicism behind Lord Malcolm Offord – predicted to be crowned Reform’s leader in Scotland - saying last week Reform couldn’t rule out another Scottish independence referendum, though not for at least a decade.

“Nigel Farage’s man in Scotland talks up another divisive independence referendum,” Scottish Conservative leader Rusell Findlay scorned. “No wonder the SNP loves Reform.”

That’s a stretch, to put it mildly. Offord was hardly offering a ringing endorsement for one, adding there’s no current public appetite for it. What’s understandable, though, is Mr Findlay’s frustration as a staunch unionist whose party has been forced to repeatedly battle the constitutional question.

Partly due to that, and subsequent frustration amongst party members at a seeming inability to change the narrative, the Scottish Conservatives may soon face electoral decimation, with multiple defections to the hard-right, unpredictable, political force of Reform. Local elections in England and Wales seem likely to cement Reform’s upwards trajectory.

The SNP will continue pushing independence. They have to. But while it’s their alleged entire reason for existing, their rhetoric and actions since 2014 have caused enormous frustration for many, including a sizeable number who desire independence. Whether you voted Yes or No in 2014, if you did so with certainty, chances are you’ve felt let down by what’s happened politically ever since.

For staunch Yes voters, the 2014 result was bruising. Repeated failures by the SNP to successfully argue the case for independence since, plus all the energies of the diverse ‘Yes movement’ being swept into party politics have hardly had positive outcomes. For No voters, on the other hand, the promise of a ‘once in a generation’ debate has been broken, repeatedly and unfairly.

Unlike those staunchly Yes, or more gently persuaded (as I was in 2014) to take a punt on the promise of living in ‘the early days of a better nation,’ as Alasdair Gray put it, those who very strongly opposed Scottish secession didn’t even want to be having the discussion in the first place.

While my own ‘indyref’ was largely positive, offline, and felt a time of enthusiastic democratic engagement, I recognise now that the referendum was far more divisive than I’d then cared to appreciate. I didn’t lose a single friend over the issue, fully understood why someone would vote No, and accepted the result after a few days of feeling – if I’m honest – heartily embarrassed at how emphatic the No was, particularly in my then home-city of Edinburgh. I’d been in a fairly unique echo-chamber, and came to face that every passing week after the vote.

In the years since, largely due to Nicola Sturgeon’s policy-agenda post-indyref, I’ve now spent far too many years of my finite life thrust into another debate I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have imagined would demand discussion – whether women are, indeed, adult human females who deserve their own rights and spaces free of all men, or whether some male people who report having a ‘female gender identity’ should be considered women for all purposes.

Debating this issue has felt genuinely foundationally insane at times. Yet, nothing has yet stopped it: not male rapists in women’s prisons, not men in women’s sports, not the power of reason and logic.

Every emphatic win by women – including at the Supreme Court - has been met with renewed backlash and doubling down by the SNP and the pro-independence Scottish Greens.

It mightn’t seem directly comparable, but given that experience, I’ve come to appreciate how frustrating it’s been for those who support the union, who successfully won that argument, then had to endlessly repeat themselves, for over a decade, while being responded to with pie-in-the-sky idealism, bad-faith, and/or torrents of online abuse.

Still, one of the most heartening parts of supporting the movement of women who’ve fought the SNP’s ‘gender wars’, has been the coming together of women of all political affiliations, both unionist, pro-independence, or happily agnostic on the not-even-on-the-cards issue, who’ve worked towards restoring women’s rights in life and law.

It might be hangover naivety from my Yes days; an inbuilt idealism that still covets working as if ‘in the early days of a better nation’, but given this experience, a much-needed reminder across-the-aisles solidarity is possible, I can’t help but hope both staunch unionists and pro-independence legislators might come to recognise where they might work in consensus, pragmatically, for the benefit of all, on other urgent matters. For now, the constitutional question has been answered. It’s beyond time the SNP faced this, and others refused being played like a fiddle to that tired tune.