THE chief strategist of the 2014 Yes campaign has urged Nicola Sturgeon to compromise and to work on building a better Scotland within the UK.
Stephen Noon said the First Minister should halt plans to treat the next general election as a proxy independence referendum.
The Scottish Government is still engaged in a legal battle with the UK for the right to hold indyref2.
Noon, 51, served as a senior policy adviser to Alex Salmond before working on the Yes Scotland campaign.
Speaking to The Times, he said: “There is a different path. I want Scotland to have the form of government that it wishes, and that may not be independence.
“I will argue with my heart and soul for independence, but I recognise that that may not be the point we get to in the immediate future.
“I may want to get 100% of what I want, but that’s not life. In life you sometimes get 90% of what you want and that’s good enough.
“And so for the independence movement, if we can get 90% of what we want, and in a way which gives the No side also a good chunk of what they want, is that not worth exploring?”
The hearing about whether or not the Scottish Government will be able to push ahead with indyref2 is set to take place in London on October 11 and 12.
Following the 2014 referendum, Noon gave up politics and trained as a Jesuit priest.
He has, however, decided to leave the religious order and study for an MPhil in ethics and practical theology at the University of Edinburgh.
Noon continued: “We have an opportunity, potentially in a few months, to choose a path which takes us to another point of escalation, which is a general election fought on whether we become independent or not.
“Or we can take a step back. It’s not just for the SNP to take a step back, it’s actually also for the Labour Party, it’s for the Liberal Democrats.
“Are we prepared to enter a conversation which is at a different level and enter a process where we might not get what we want, but we might get what the people of Scotland want?”
Both of the Tory leadership candidates have ruled out the possibility of granting a second referendum.
A recent poll showed that more people were likely to vote Yes regardless of whether Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss becomes prime minister
Noon has called for a cross-party constitutional convention similar to the one in the 1990s which helped set out the blueprint for devolution.
He said: “There’s the independence in Europe of the SNP, but I think there’s also the possibility of independence within the UK.
“I think that is something which we have got the ability to create, to work out.”
