Independence is a project much better suited to opposition than government. It is, after all, quintessentially anti-establishment. That’s its purpose: to disrupt the status quo.

This may, in part, account for the failure of the SNP-led Yes campaign in 2014. It’s hard to claim you’re coming to smash the establishment when you’re the establishment.

Indeed, the 2014 campaign was fundamentally ‘safe’. It was a campaign by an existing government to change the wallpaper inside the palace, not pull the palace down.

Since 2014, through lengthy daydreams like the Growth Commission, the Yes campaign became milksop in the extreme, lacking all bite.

Read more Neil’s Unspun

This explains to some degree why the Yes campaign - and the SNP’s leadership when it talked of independence - was forever bogged down in process, like how to get another referendum or byzantine currency arguments.

Compare that to Brexit. What was the slogan again? ‘Get Brexit Done’. It wasn’t about process, it was about passion.

Brexiteers didn’t care about the Irish border or shared security. They had an ideology and they were going to bring their vision to life through sheer force of will and the exploitation of raw emotion.

The Yes movement was too worried about looking grown-up and clever. Brexiteers didn’t give a damn what people thought of them as long as their views led the news.

From the perspective of 2024 - when populism dominates and what matters is how voters feel not........

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