Nation-building ought to be a slow process, expanding gently from a solid core, carefully absorbing any pockets of scepticism through compromise and respect, without ever losing its central, mobilising energy. Nicola Sturgeon was part of that solid core for decades: a member of the SNP‘s “gradualist” faction who were committed, for reasons of both practicality and principle, to a long and inclusive march to Scottish independence through the institutions of the British state. Until now, that strategy has worked so well that one of those British institutions – the Scottish Parliament, which is no less British than the Bank of England – is now in the hands of that nationalist core.
But slow and steady only gets you so far. The problem is, as always, the other team. If gradualism reflects the remarkable politeness of the SNP’s nationalism, it is with the politeness of people who are being tolerated as guests in someone else’s house. In pursuing a peaceful, consensual road to independence, Scottish nationalism’s modern leaders have simply followed the etiquette of their Westminster hosts, who pioneered the gradualist strategy. Scotland was absorbed peacefully into an earlier empire-building project, offered a treaty, a large sum of money and a host of autonomous institutions in exchange for its dissolution into the Kingdom of Great Britain. This absorption was gradualist and consensual, at least by 18th-century standards; it would make sense that its departure should be the same.
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