So at the moment, Scottish independence is increasingly being talked about as if it's an inevitability.

In the Scottish elections in May, everything seems to point to a crushing victory for the

SMP, which would be its fourth successive electoral victory. The last 20 opinion polls have shown

support for independence in the lead. On the other hand, Scotland, of course, is now outside of the

European Union. Independence

would involve seeking to rejoin the EU and instituting a hard border between Scotland and

the north of England. And then, of course, the economic case for independence looks a harder

sell than it has done in previous times. So do you regard independence as an inevitability

at this stage?

No, I don't think so. I think that independence is certainly more likely than it's ever been.

There is essentially a real narrative around it now that says it's definitely going to happen. And that's been a central part of the nationalist tradition since it kind of modernised in the 70s.

And obviously Tom Nairn was a key part of that where he created this kind of big narrative

framework in which independence became a sort of inevitable evolution of the structure of

British politics.

And that was absorbed by the S&P, by the independence movement, to give them a bit of self-confidence,

to give them a kind of nice narrative framing for things.

And it's woven its way into the structure of the British kind of commentary at consciousness since then.

I think there's a lot of evasion involved in the popularity of that narrative.

I think for some people it helps to not talk about the underlying repressive capacity of the British state, both in kind of political

terms and also, you know, in the final instance, they do, they can send in the English police,

I suppose, or the army, but they can still say no, not just to the result of a referendum,

but there's loads of roadblocks they can put in the way before then. The real question is,

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