Pete Wishart is feeling reflective as he looks at his role in the campaign for independence, 10 years since Scotland voted no.
“Was this a warm-up and taster for a future victory, or the end of the independence dream?” asks the veteran Perthshire SNP politician.
It’s a question which sets the tone in the opening paragraphs of his new book, Inside the Indy Ref, a collection of his campaign diaries being released to mark the anniversary of the vote.
A former rockstar, Mr Wishart swapped the world of Glastonbury and world tours for Westminster almost of quarter of a century ago.
He’d spent 15 years as a member of the Scottish group Runrig.
An MP since 2001, he’s now more focused on the ups and downs of the opinion polls than chart positions.
Ultimately, success in the independence referendum was a step too far on September 18 2014.
Ten years from that landmark vote, Mr Wishart tells The Courier that even in the most positive days of the Yes campaign, he never thought his side had quite tipped the balance in their favour.
‘When we started off there was no chance’
“When we started off there was no chance,” he says, pointing out that opinion polling showed support for independence remained around 30% until early 2014.
“It was a huge ask starting from such a low base when the armoury was against us – every single part of the Westminster establishment and all the political parties of the UK.
“With the forces that were against us I thought what we did was impressive.
“I think the only time was when that opinion poll came out that had us ahead, but in retrospect it did come too early and it gave the [No campaign] a chance to respond.
“Not only did they respond, they responded in a way that was quite difficult for us to address.”
‘It was such an exciting and dramatic time’
The politician added: “There were times when it felt like we were making real progress.
“We were getting battered by the No campaign on issues to do with currency and Europe. But we stood there resilient and we almost got there.”
‘Surprise’ at independence opposition in SNP-dominated Perth
Glasgow and Dundee were the only Scottish cities that went on to support independence.
Mr Wishart’s native Fife – where he was raised by parents Nan and Alex – and the area he represents in parliament overwhelmingly backed the status quo.
So why is it that voters in Perth keep voting for the SNP? For decades they have elected and re-elected Mr Wishart and First Minister John Swinney to represent the Fair City.
Mr Wishart explains this was a failure of the campaign, and the opposition on his home front proved a surprise.
He says: “I remember John and I going to constituency meetings, and we just always presumed that the areas that voted SNP would be our strongest Yes voting areas, but it just didn’t happen.
“We were surprised when we started campaigning that people who had supported John and I in the past weren’t prepared to support independence.
What went wrong for Yes campaign?
“A couple of things happened. I think there was an urban/rural split, and we weren’t able to fully enlist pockets of middle Scotland.
“We had a compelling case for working class communities, but at the same time that was maybe pushing middle class people off the other end.
“It took us a while to start to acknowledge that this was a feature and I think that’s why a lot of the energy then went on to places like Glasgow and Dundee.”
It’s a theme the dad-of-one returns to when asked what lessons he hopes supporters of the SNP will learn from reading his diaries, should they ever get a second chance.
“If we were to do this campaign again, we’d have to be very conscious that we had a compelling message for middle Scotland,” he says.
“We need more of a message of reassurance. One thing I did, and I talk about in the book, is speaking about Britishness…we just left that to the No campaign.”
But he says that any future push for leaving the UK would also benefit from the changed circumstances of life in the union.
“That middle Scotland that we couldn’t reach in the Independence campaign, we did with Brexit,” he says.
“People who voted remain started to get what we were trying to argue in terms of Scotland being a member of the EU. I think we’ve eventually got there.”
Will Pete Wishart have a second chance?
Whether there will be another referendum is an open question.
Support for independence has been stable, drifting between 45% and 50% since 2014, but polls suggest Scots are not enthusiastic for another ballot.
Asked about their priorities, they are more likely to say the Scottish Government should focus on health and education.
And after a challenging set of results at the general election, which saw the SNP drop into second place behind Labour in Scotland, the First Minister says the issue is “on the back burner”.
Mr Wishart admits his lifelong goal does feel more remote now than it did in the days and weeks after the results in 2014.
“We didn’t know, that was the thing,” he adds. “The hours and days following, anything could have happened.
“I remember some of the conversations I had, we were sort of spooked by what happened in 1979 where immediately after the first vote for the Scottish Parliament all the energy went out of that campaign.
“The SNP took a hammering and the parliament took almost two decades. We sort of thought that might happen, but it didn’t.
“What we saw very early on was a resilience building up, a sense this wasn’t concluded. So obviously yes, we were closer then. That energy was still in place and sustained us all the way through to 2015 when we almost got 50% of the vote.
“We were in a situation where it stayed together for a long time, but we are in a different situation now 10 years on.
Yes movement ‘fractious’
“It’s a different movement. It’s uncertain of itself, it’s fractious and there’s no clear way forward. All these things have an impact.”
After being elected to the House of Commons for another five years to represent Perth and Kinross-shire, Mr Wishart hopes his diaries will serve as a bookmark rather than a bookend to his time in politics.
“I’ve done this for 24 years, I know what I’m doing now and I’m enjoying politics more than I have for a long, long time,” he says.
“I’m looking forward to this term in parliament. It’s totally different.
“I was there when Tony Blair had his massive majority but this doesn’t feel anything like that at all. It’s a totally new dynamic and we’ve still got to see how the Starmer government is going to reach out.
“I’m really excited.”
Conversation