John Swinney has urged independence supporters not to live in the past as he celebrated the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum as a moment of “reawakening” for the yes movement.
Speaking to a crowd of campaigners in Edinburgh 10 years to the day since Scotland voted 55% to 45% to remain part of the UK, the SNP leader said: “We have had a long, dark decade – a decade of austerity, of Brexit, of a cost of living crisis and a global pandemic.”
“As a nation, we can’t just regret the things that we cannot do – it is time for us to start focusing again on the things that we can,” he said. “And that is exactly what we are going to do. It starts by reawakening the sense of optimism, of hope and of possibility that was so prevalent throughout Scotland in 2014.”
The former first minister Nicola Sturgeon predicted on Wednesday that Scotland would become an independent country as part of a “wider shake-up” of the UK, as senior figures across Scottish politics reflected on the anniversary of the referendum.
With support for independence stabilised at just below 50%, the former SNP leader told BBC Scotland News: “I believe that, perhaps as part of a wider shake-up of UK governance, the reunification of Ireland, perhaps, more autonomy in Wales, that I think we will see Scotland become an independent country.”
Sturgeon, who led the Scottish National party’s part in the yes campaign as party deputy in 2014, succeeded Alex Salmond as leader when he resigned after the referendum defeat. She expressed frustration at the impasse reached with Westminster in the intervening decade over whether Holyrood has the right to call a second poll on independence.
“I came up against a brick wall of Westminster democracy-denial in refusing the right of the Scottish people to choose their own future,” she said. “Do I wish I had found a way around that? Yes, but that was the situation I faced. Had that right to choose been secured, I believe Scotland would have voted yes.”
However, the UK trade minister Douglas Alexander, who was part of the pro-union Better Together campaign in 2014, said the general election result proved that Scotland “genuinely has moved on … from a debate where we think the only way to see the changes we want is further devolution”.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, Alexander said: “To be fair to the 45% [who voted yes in 2014], a number of them genuinely and sincerely believed a vote for independence was a way to secure change, and what we actually saw on 4 July was an overwhelming desire for change being channelled into [a] vote for the Labour party not the SNP.”
While 18 September 2014 was “a hinge of history”, Alexander said: “Many of us want to leave behind the rancour, the division, the polarisation that has characterised a lot of the last decade and get on with the practical changes most of us want to see rebuilding our health service, improving our education system and getting the economy back on track.”
Although support for independence has remained relatively steady, the SNP has suffered a steep decline in popularity amid a series of financial scandals and perceived failure to focus on public priorities, resulting in a general election rout that left them with only nine MPs.
The former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who also campaigned for Better Together a decade ago, said Sturgeon has squandered an opportunity to secure a second referendum by seeming to capitalise on the chaos of Brexit too quickly.
She told BBC Scotland News: “Her appetite to go so fast, so hard and so early took that opportunity away from her.”
