The older you get the grumpier you become about repeats, and not just on television. In the world of public policy, you begin to notice that the same bad ideas keep coming round and round.
The sales pitch might be altered, the window dressing rejigged, but the goods being flogged remain unchanged.
Albert Einstein said repeating the same action while expecting a different outcome was the definition of madness, but it’s also an uncanny description of politics.
John Swinney’s new independence plan, announced at the end of last week, proposes a three-pronged approach.
First, it commits to building up support for separation so that it becomes the settled will of the vast majority of Scots.
Next, it undertakes to ramp up pressure on Westminster to concede that will and permit another referendum to confirm it.
Finally, it asks the voters to give the SNP another term in charge at next year’s Scottish Parliament elections.
The word ‘new’ is doing a lot of heavy-lifting here. Swinney is not submitting any novel tactics or strategies; he offers no answers to impediments economic or constitutional.
He is simply rewrapping the same hollow pledges in a shinier bow, and he is doing it for cynical reasons.
A growing faction inside the SNP wants Swinney gone and replaced by a younger, more aggressive leader like Stephen Flynn, whom they believe can regain momentum on the constitution.
Swinney is looking out for his own skin, not Scotland. In his defence, he’s hardly the first SNP leader to string along the party faithful with empty promises.
There is an Indyref 2 panic button at Bute House and, little more than a year into his leadership, Swinney has punched it.
It’s a wonder this button still works given the scale of overuse in the past decade.
In March 2016, Nicola Sturgeon hit the alarm and announced ‘a new initiative to build support for independence’ that summer. Once summer was over, she unveiled a ‘new conversation’ on independence, then, the following month, a consultation on an Indyref2 Bill.
In March 2017, Sturgeon said autumn 2018 would be a ‘common sense’ time for a new referendum and, later that month, that she planned to request a Section 30 order from Westminster.
The following May, the panic alarm was back in use when Sturgeon published the report of her Sustainable Growth Commission into ‘the economic opportunities of independence’.
In April 2019, she confirmed her government would be ‘giving people a choice on independence later in this term of parliament’. That October, she told SNP conference there would be a referendum in 2020.
In January 2021, Sturgeon promised a referendum if the SNP won that May’s Holyrood elections and then, in September, commissioned a ‘detailed prospectus’ on the case for independence. Two months later, she told SNP conference that her independence campaign would relaunch in 2022.
In June 2022, the Indyref button was jabbed again, as Sturgeon set out plans for a referendum in 2023.
Then, that November, she declared the 2024 general election a ‘de facto referendum’. Come October 2023, her successor Humza Yousaf stated that election would in fact be an opportunity to give the SNP a mandate to enter negotiations for a second referendum.
Then last June, his successor John Swinney said voting SNP in the following month’s election would ‘intensify the pressure to secure Scottish independence’.
For a decade, party members have been left waiting for a referendum that was never coming and perhaps never will. The SNP has enough financial woes as it is, but its constitutional strategists ought to be paying royalties to the estate of Samuel Beckett.
The secret to the SNP’s success in the Alex Salmond and early Sturgeon years was its positioning as a big-tent, New Labour-style party. By being all things to all people, the Nationalists were able to cobble together a formidable electoral coalition.
Independence supporters could back the SNP safe in the knowledge that secession was its chief priority, while Unionists could back them knowing they were in no hurry to secede.
That tent has been stretched to breaking point.
Swinney’s latest ruse will have been greeted with horror by pro-Union voters and people of all constitutional persuasions who want to see the Scottish Government focused on the economy, services and public safety for the time being.
He was supposed to be different. A fresh start. A first minister who would move beyond division and get Holyrood back on track.
Instead, he has revealed himself to be every bit the political tribalist that Sturgeon and Yousaf were, more fixated on internal party disputes than on the concerns of ordinary Scots.
Swinney has made clear that he puts party before nation. How can he expect voters who put Scotland before the SNP to lend him their votes?
And while he disregards the interests of pro-Union voters, he doesn’t do so to serve the interests of pro-independence voters. He puts party before nation but also puts self before party.
All Yes voters get from Swinney is pandering. He has no intention of doing anything for them.
He talks independence to get them riled up and out to the polls to vote SNP but, once the ballots are in, the constitution tumbles back down the hierarchy of priorities.
Unionists decry the contempt in which they are held within the senior ranks of the SNP, but they should spare a thought for the grubby, exploitative way in which Yes voters are treated.
Set aside your own thoughts about independence. It is something half the people in this country believe in, many of them passionately and some of them their whole life long.
Time and again they were assured by Sturgeon, then Yousaf, and now Swinney that it was coming yet for a’ that.
One more plan, one more push. It’s within reach, almost there. Vote here, donate there.
But it wasn’t coming, it still isn’t, and it won’t be any time soon.
At this point, there are two paths to independence.
Convince Westminster to allow a repeat of the 2014 vote. Granting another referendum would be an act of unparalleled stupidity, sure to do grievous harm to Britain, and would require a prime minister with the strategic nous of a baked potato.
You can see why the SNP might harbour hopes for Keir Starmer, but it is still highly unlikely that Westminster would take the risk.
Alternatively, you could go down the route of a unilateral declaration of independence, but it’s fraught with risk, has no guarantee of success and might even make some important nations ill-disposed to Scotland. (They have their own separatist movements and it would not be in their interests for a Scottish UDI to be a success.)
If Holyrood declares independence, there is no mechanism to compel Westminster or any foreign state to recognise it.
Instead of being honest with their voters, the SNP leadership spins out fantasies like Swinney’s three-pronged plan and tries to gull ordinary Nationalists into thinking independence is imminent, so they keep voting and donating. Giving people false hope is one of the cruellest things you can do in politics but the SNP does it to its own voters without compunction.
The SNP has never been in politics for Unionists, of course, but it’s no longer in it for Nationalists either. It has ceased to be a big-tent party and has become a narrow elite that exists only to serve its own interests and maintain itself in power.
No plan, no matter how many prongs it has, is going to change that. The only way forward is for all Scots, Unionists and Nationalists alike, to declare their independence from the SNP at the ballot box.