I would have thought that it is only now that people can make a career out of SNP politics that independence is even a possibility. In earlier generations talented ambitious politicians went into Labour or the Conservatives to advance their own career prospects by being MPs at Westminster and if they could get ahead into a top cabinet post by being Westminster's representative in Scotland rather than Scotland's representative in Westminster they did so. Look at what Malcom Rifkind and Robin Cook both did to devolution in the 70's to advance their own careers. If those sort of talented people now go into the SNP in greater numbers and use their talents to realise their personal ambitions within a Scottish political context in Edinburgh then independence in Europe has finally gone from being a pie in the sky politics of fantasy put forward by a third party protest vote vehicle to being into the realm of the genuine concrete practical politics of actual day to day governance.

I think under John Swinney it is back on the agenda more than it ever was under Alex Salmond who may have ultimately been more committed to socialist politics than civic national ones IMO. To achieve anything you either have to have at least a share of power or be in a position to force the government to modify its policies significantly by conceding something like devolution. The SNP managed the latter in 1997 as Westminster Labour would not have agreed to the devolution "settlement" if they had not been worried about losing a significant portion of their ca. 50 Scottish MPs and consequently their ability to govern England and wales from Westminster if they had broken their Home Rule promises like earlier Labour government did by maintaining the constitutional status quo once in office after having made firm promises to the Scottish electorate prior to gaining office.

Now that the concession has been made the electoral implications of the WLQ means that Labour rather than the Conservatives are now the party with the most to gain electorally by maintaining the status quo arrangement. If the SNP is serious about moving to greater self-government in the current set of circumstances then a slight rightward ideological realignment away from the stance adopted pre-1997 makes sense as the SNP as the Conservatives may well be the only viable coalition partner for the SNP at Holyrood given that the Labour and the Lib Dems engineered the Constitutional Convention plan to maximise the probablility that they would be in power at Holyrood in perpetuity UUP Stormont style. To take things further in terms of self-government unless an outright majority can somehow be obtained by the SNP it seems highly likely IMO that there would need to be at least one more stepping stone short of independence to obtain more meaningful economic and tax-raising powers in addition to the current sweeping administrative and legislative autonomy as no party that wants power at Westminster as well as Holyrood is going to easily agree to holding an independence referendum for Scotland. In many ways another stepping stone is required for there to be a firm foundation for moving to a fully independent state as the current devolution package in many ways is just a souped up Strathclyde region that falls a long way short of the powers of a US or Australian state or a Canadian province in many important areas. The party with most to gain from a further change at Westminster is not Labour but the Conservatives due to the influence of the WLQ within the new political climate:-

and although this may not be ideologically palatable for some people to accept after the last 20 years of Scottish political life I have yet to hear much in the way of an argument to refute what Messrs MacLeod and Fry had to say on this subject prior to the SNP leadership vote.

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