Scottish independence: Why the indy cause will go nowhere without an end to SNP secrecy

Ministers were told to publish analysis around the timescale for an independent Scotland joining the European Union

It is hard to overstate quite how damning the Scottish Information Commissioner’s recent judgement on analysis on the timescale of an independent Scotland joining the EU is.

While it represents another demonstration of the Scottish Government’s self-destructive inability to appropriately apply freedom of information legislation, the ruling also hints at a central problem with Humza Yousaf’s pitch to undecided voters on the constitutional issue.

Examine the wording of the decision by commissioner Daren Fitzhenry and this becomes clear; the information claimed to be out of scope was obviously relevant or it would have been an “entirely random” inclusion, “mundane” bits of information with “deductions which are unlikely to surprise the reasonably informed observer” kept from the public, and that information about EU membership timescales would be something that “might influence the way they vote in a second independence referendum.”

First Minister Humza Yousaf speaks during a press conference at the launch of the latest Building a New Scotland independence prospectus paper.

The suggestion from ministers that having a private space with which to discuss the issue of EU membership, in particular papers looking at timescales of other nations, was more in the public interest than this information being published was effectively ridiculed by the commissioner.

And no wonder.

The SNP has built much of its renewed prospectus for independence on the promise of EU membership and the folly of Brexit.

But – as with other issues such as currency and the economics of early independence – there is a lack of openness and honesty about the challenges from the party.

Instead the party expects voters to entertain the fiction of potential future political scenarios – that the reality of a independent Scotland would spark the EU into action – over the very real current political reality – that the EU has little reason to offer special treatment.

Independence, as Brexit did, may feel distant and impossible to some but was and is a legitimate political project.

But those key swing voters who would win the SNP another referendum have, with Brexit, been burned by false populist promises on such a project before. Many are unwilling to be fooled again.

Until the SNP steps up to and is honest about the challenges its political endgame presents, voters will remain in the dark and independence will remain a pipe-dream.