“WHAT kind of country do we want to be?” asked Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister and the leader of the Scottish National Party, in her closing speech at the SNP’s annual conference in Glasgow. A heckler provided an answer: “An independent one!” The crowd cheered. But Ms Sturgeon winced.

The shout was a painful reminder that the party’s ultimate aim of independence is some way off. After an aborted push for a second referendum earlier this year (the first such plebiscite was lost by 45% to 55% in 2014), Scotland’s nationalist party now hesitates on the topic. Independence will come “as soon as we can”, said Angus Robertson, the SNP’s deputy leader. Beyond that, details are thin. The newfound reticence is simple: 52% of Scots oppose holding an independence referendum within the next five years, according to polls by YouGov. But not many of this number were in Glasgow. Any mention of a second vote on independence was met with wild enthusiasm by SNP supporters that belied the project’s indefinite timeline.

Their zeal clashed with a leadership desperate to use the three-day gathering to portray the SNP as a party of government, rather than just independence. Catalan-flag-wielding delegates were treated to a buffet of new policies to compensate for the absence of the one they really want. Scottish parents will benefit from 30 hours of free child-care per week, thanks to an extra £420m ($550m) in funding by 2021. Bursaries worth £20,000 will be handed to those thinking of becoming teachers. A publicly owned energy company will sell gas and electricity at close to cost price. Some carers will be exempt from council tax. “We can do all these things because we are in government,” pleaded Ms Sturgeon. As far as the SNP’s leadership is concerned, the route to independence lies through good governance.

This path to freedom will not be easy. The above policies are pricey. Ms Sturgeon has made tentative noises about increasing taxes. Despite having the power to do so, the SNP has been reluctant. Tax rises are always tricky, but especially so for a party that has built its success on popular giveaways such as free university tuition. Any increase would probably not come until next year. By the time any benefit trickled into the public finances, the Scottish parliamentary election of 2021 would be nigh, points out Mark Diffley, an independent pollster. Voters would have less money in their pockets and not much in the way of higher public spending to show for it.

After ten years in power in Scotland, the SNP’s support is waning. It lost 21 of its 56 MPs in the general election in June, after half a million voters deserted the party. Its remaining 35 MPs have small majorities: the SNP’s safest seat has a cushion of fewer than 7,000 votes, whereas 22 have majorities of under 3,000. In June it was squeezed by both the resurgent Scottish Conservatives, who picked up much of the unionist vote, and by Labour, which outflanked the SNP on its left. Labour’s revival in England also weakens the SNP’s argument that independence is the only way that Scots can avoid being governed by Tories in Westminster.

In the Scottish Parliament, where the party has 63 out of 129 members, it is on track to lose seats in 2021. Though it is likely to remain comfortably the largest party, it may lose the narrow parliamentary majority in favour of independence.

Brexit adds more confusion, providing the SNP with both a rallying cry and a schism. The party’s desire for Scotland to remain in the EU, in line with the vote of 62% of Scots last year, has been full-throated. But that sits uneasily with polls showing that about a third of SNP supporters voted to leave. An independent Scotland would face barriers to trade with England, its main trading partner, if one country were inside the EU and the other outside it. Yet some Scottish nationalists are banking on Brexit being such a disaster that clamour for separation grows. Independence, say several MSPs, is a “lifeboat” from the soon-to-be-shipwrecked Britain. “The strategy as such is simply: stay in power, and then hope that someone makes some awful screw-up,” says Alex Bell, a former SNP staffer.

Independence is still the aim, but an increasingly distant one. Ms Sturgeon closed her speech with a plea for patience. For now, governing comes first.