Scottish independence has become a long game

IN JUNESNPSNPSNPSNPSNPMP 2022 Nicola Sturgeon, then first minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party (), proposed that the country would hold a second independence referendum on October 19th 2023. (Scots voted against secession in 2014.) Since then much has gone wrong for Ms Sturgeon, the and the dream of independence that is the party’s raison d’être. At its annual conference in Aberdeen this week, far from looking to the sunlit uplands of secession, members seemed to be gathered under lowering clouds.The ’s run of disasters began last November, when Britain’s Supreme Court ruled that Scotland could not hold another referendum without Westminster’s say-so. In February Ms Sturgeon, a charismatic champion of independence, resigned. Four months later she was briefly arrested in a police inquiry into the ’s finances. That contributed to electoral catastrophe on October 5th, when the party lost a by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, near Glasgow, to Labour. Days later an defected to the Conservatives.