10:06

Pro-independence activists have launched a fund-raising drive for a new campaign with the sole aim of pushing support for a yes vote to above 50%, with Nicola Sturgeon continuing to delay her decision on the timing of a new referendum.

The Scottish Independence Convention, a veteran umbrella organisation which includes nearly every significant group in the yes movement, including the Scottish National party, Scottish Greens and Women for Independence, wants to hire full-time campaigners.

It has yet to decide on a new name, but the convention said it has already retained “a top design agency to help develop these plans and also large-scale in-depth public engagement research to provide the new campaign body with the best start possible.”

Sturgeon, backed by her Brexit secretary Mike Russell, challenged yes campaigners to put far more energy into persuading neutrals, no voters and undecideds that independence was Scotland’s best option post Brexit in her party conference speech last week.

Russell was quite blunt, saying independence “isn’t just about grabbing a lifeboat in choppy and dangerous seas”. The party had to wait until “our country is persuaded, ready and determined to win”, he said.

If it gets set up, it has challenges and advantages. Firstly, the off-repeated headline figure that the yes vote is close to 50% is misleading. The polls show show support for independence hovering at 41% to 43% with no at 49% to 53%, with don’t knows included. With don’t knows removed, the gap between yes and no has ranged from 6% to 12% since June. The highest net yes vote this year was at 48% in March.

The polls do show yes support inching upwards if voters are asked about a hard Brexit, yet no poll shows a majority for a referendum in the immediate future: Sturgeon’s position is hedged entirely around Brexit going badly, and that in turn fueling consistent and significant discontent with the union.

But the independence movement has a distinct advantage over its opponents: it shows a high degree of unity of purpose. Its members do disagree over tactics and political philosophy, but Labour and the Tories will find it extremely hard to work together in a second anti-independence campaign.

Labour, now further to the left than in 2014, was very badly burnt by the “red Tory” smear put about by its opponents for collaborating with the Tories in Better Together last time. Some Labour voters flipped to the SNP in protest. It will not repeat the experience.