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CommonSpace columnist and Common Weal director Robin McAlpine says that people mustn't forget the kind of independent Scotland they're fighting for as the movement for indy grows post-Brexit

I AM an arch pluralist. I have beliefs that I hold with a commitment verging on tenacity. But I recognise that unless these beliefs are tested by others, by critical voices, it is very likely that I will miss weaknesses in my beliefs and that I will therefore fail to improve my beliefs.

For me, constructive criticism isn't about persuading each other that we're wrong, it's about showing each other where we're not right enough. The alternative is complacency and failure.

In post-Brexit Scotland, there is now a serious challenge to my version of Scottish independence. I, like the vast majority of the mainstream of the independence movement, have always seen independence as a project with economic and social equality at its heart – along with a strong cultural element. It is a democratisation project, not a management buy-out.

It is a neoliberal vision. If Scotland is in the EU and England isn't then the argument goes that Scotland would be in prime position to poach the headquarters of corporations (and especially big banks) who want to trade directly into the EU.

That mainstream view is under some pressure. There isn't all that much of the political right of the SNP, but they are influential – and they have their own emerging vision of what independence is about.

It is a neoliberal vision. If Scotland is in the EU and England isn't then the argument goes that Scotland would be in prime position to poach the headquarters of corporations (and especially big banks) who want to trade directly into the EU.

The idea is that this will fix the apparent fiscal deficit, but also that it will create a centre right narrative about independence. Those who believe in this argue that the left and centre left (which is electorally speaking the large majority of Scots) have 'nowhere to go'. They will just have to lump it and come out and vote Yes anyway.

In return, the rightwing vision will reach those the left can't – or at least all the centrist and rightwing pro-EU vote. The gamble is that not enough SNP members and voters are really all that committed to the social justice agenda or that they'll just stick it out with the promise of victory in their ears.

If they're right, it won't mean a major split in the party and Greens can 'mop up' those who just can't stick it out.

The idea is that this will fix the apparent fiscal deficit, but also that it will create a centre right narrative about independence.

In this vision, we reach the rightwing's moment of perfection – the rapprochement photograph with Nicola Sturgeon and JK Rowling hugging under a Yes banner. The centre to centre-right vision converts 'New Town' conservatives and New Labour types to the cause. The Scottish establishment are all privately guaranteed that their privileged positions won't change. They might even be offered a package of sweeteners (a promise of no more land reform?).

With the working classes and the progressives 'in the bag' (but ignored), this means there is little meaningful opposition. Rather than a 2014-style contested referendum, we then get a barely contested one like the 1997 devolution referendum. It enables a smooth transition without any substantial change to the power balance in Scotland.

Everyone gets back on to doing what they were doing anyway – except that the leading rightwingers who masterminded the move have many new lucrative jobs to dish out between themselves. I suspect they just assume that so long as they keep Nicola Sturgeon as their front woman then there will be no electoral challenge to them after the referendum either.

Now during the first referendum I welcomed differences of views of our future – in particular, the Wealthy Nation folks argued for a future with which I disagreed but it was a proper challenge to the idea that we faced a monolithic, one-party state with no intellectual diversity after a Yes vote. So definitely let's have a debate.

What is bothering me is that there doesn't seem to be much evidence that there is going to be a debate. It has always been a notable fact that the left is expected to show loyalty at all times but the right simply doesn't. It never seems to stop lobbying for what it wants (the same was true throughout the Blair years).

Those who believe in this argue that the left and centre left (which is electorally speaking the large majority of Scots) have 'nowhere to go'. They will just have to lump it and come out and vote Yes anyway.

Thus you won't read newspaper columns based on extended briefings by the left of the SNP about how they are plotting to capture the party and its narrative. But the right are always briefing. Always.

So great – challenge the centre left vision of Scottish independence that forms the mainstream view. But please, come out of the shadows and do it in a discussion. Involve the people who have been doing the heavy lifting in the independence movement over the last few years. Please don't treat everything as if it is a coup. Surely the members of the SNP and of the wider independence movement are not your enemies?

Because I believe there is an awful lot of this rightwing case that needs to be explored with some rigour. So for example, I still see no evidence that the next big tranche of people likely to move to support independence are either the rightwing or the rich. As I argue in my book, Determination, if capturing Tory and New Labour Scotland is really the aim, it must be predicated on an assumption that we can get an 85 per cent Yes vote.

That seems fantastical to me. I can't see anything below 30 per cent of the population voting No in a referendum. That is more of the population as a whole than voted both Tory and Labour in the Holyrood elections (allowing for the much lower turnout).

Until someone shows me evidence to the contrary I will continue to be convinced that low-income pensioners and middle income families with tight family budgets are much more important to victory than the Edinburgh banking set.

In this vision, we reach the rightwing's moment of perfection – the rapprochement photograph with Nicola Sturgeon and JK Rowling hugging under a Yes banner. The centre to centre-right vision converts 'New Town' conservatives and New Labour types to the cause.

In any case, I think the fundamental basis of the rightwing argument is weak. I don't believe that the Brexit negotiations will leave the City of London cut off from European markets. I rather doubt that we're going to get the same sympathetic noises out of Brussels about Scotland's entry into the EU that we're getting just now.

When it becomes real, when Spain asks for it, I expect the same knives to be plunged into our backs by much the same EU figures who plunged them into our backs less than two years ago (oh how quick we've been to forgive). I don't think there will be a single bank who will intervene during the referendum by promising to move to Scotland.

I suspect we'll be caught in the same 'uncertainty' battle as last time with no guarantee of EU membership and no measurable corporate backing for the corporate-friendly version of independence. I think the case is both massively optimistic and will be presented as fantasy come the time.

But perhaps most importantly, we've been here before. In 1999 the SNP stood on its most left of centre manifesto, promising to raise 'a penny for Scotland' through tax. It gained its second highest vote share in history in that election. But the right of the party promised that if the party dropped the pledge and instead made common cause with the banking sector in the model of New Labour, it would get the electoral success of New Labour.

It failed to deliver – in bucketloads. The SNP vote slumped very substantially and those votes went to the Greens and the SSP. It was only as the SNP moved back to the social democratic side of the spectrum in 2007 that progress was made.

What is bothering me is that there doesn't seem to be much evidence that there is going to be a debate. It has always been a notable fact that the left is expected to show loyalty at all times but the right simply doesn't.

Then there were a load of rightwing promises before the referendum. Remember when you were promised that if you voted to join Nato there would be no attacks from people on defence and Europe and America's generals wouldn't interfere in the campaign? Total failure to deliver on that one.

Or the promise that if a corporation tax cut was given as a free gift to the corporations they wouldn't come wading into the campaign and campaign against us? How did that one go? Keep the Queen for the monarchist vote? Keep Sterling for the banks? Are you persuaded any of these promises came true?

Or what about the 2016 Holyrood manifesto. SNP 'insiders' were briefing that the 2015 rhetoric on being anti-austerity had all been fun and games when they were facing Westminster Tories but that it was important to be more small-c conservative for the sake of the centrist vote at Holyrood. So what happened to the majority then?

Again, I welcome a plural politics. But the right of the SNP has promised an incredible amount and delivered pretty well none of it. The one time they allowed a vote on it (over Nato) the SNP was nearly ripped in two, with even those who voted with the leadership expressing real anger at what had been done.

A quick note here, just in case anyone forgot. Those of us on the left promised that we'd turn out urban Scotland in numbers never seen before. We said we'd get a working class Yes vote. We said we'd bring the artists and the creatives and the progressives and many of the liberals. We did it.

In any case, I think the fundamental basis of the rightwing argument is weak. I don't believe that the Brexit negotiations will leave the City of London cut off from European markets.

I'm arguing that we can do it again, reaching another 10 per cent of Scottish voters who are angry with the current state of affairs, not because it is too leftwing but because it is too rightwing. I am very confident we can deliver them. But not with a lurch to the right.

The question is, will we be given any say in this? I doubt there are a lot of SNP members bursting to resurrect the ghost of Fred Goodwin for the purpose of winning Angus Grossart to the cause.

But they've been geed up to believe there will be a referendum very soon and they may be told that this fantastical pre-crash Iceland version of Scotland is the shortcut to fixing all our existing problems. If people feel desperate, these may be straws they clutch.

So let me be a sort of depressingly Presbyterian Scot; there is no shortcut. Our case is no stronger today than it was pre-Brexit (though their case is definitely weaker). The problems we faced last month have not gone away. I still think working hard is the only way to solve them, not grasping at magical solutions being offered in anonymous briefings.

If you think this swing right can be achieved without splitting the movement, without creating a host of conflicts inside and outside the SNP, I think you're being optimistic. If you believe that genuine economic and social equality can be achieved through a hostile banking takeover, you definitely lack evidence (because it's never happened anywhere before, as even the IMF now accepts).

When it becomes real, when Spain asks for it, I expect the same knives to be plunged into our backs by much the same EU figures who plunged them into our backs less than two years ago (oh how quick we've been to forgive).

So by all means let's have a debate. And no, I don't for a second think the outcome of that debate means I will get everything I want. But if the siren voices of the over-promising right use insider access to turn this into a fait acomplis before anyone else gets a say, they had better deliver what they've never come close to delivering in the past.

Because if they are using this moment of crisis cynically to pursue their political interests, if they're using people's desire for independence as a cover for a kind of coup, if they split this movement again and harm our collective cause for their own ends without serious questions being asked of their pitch, I for one will not forgive them.

Picture courtesy of Robin McAlpine