Scotland’s New Path to Independence
By Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp
This is an update on the Believe in Scotland path to independence published in autumn 2025 with observations on the wins we have generated and milestones passed as well as considering a few flies in the ointment.
Last November Believe in Scotland published a roadmap to Scotland’s independence, one that we felt was the quickest, surest and most pragmatic path to independence from where we found ourselves at that time. You can read that plan in detail here: There is a new path to independence opening up - Let's take it.
In August 2025 a team representing Believe in Scotland and Business for Scotland had met with the First Minister, John Swinney, former MSP and Cabinet Secretary, Angus Robertson, and SNP Deputy Leader, Keith Brown at Bute House to discuss how we could work together to deliver Scottish Independence. Following on from that meeting an agreement on how our organisations would work together to deliver independence was signed and we have also verbally agreed to sign a similar accord with the Scottish Green Party.
Before we focus on the path to independence it's important to point out that BiS, the lead campaign group of the indy movement, has been doing the hard work, the movement building/nation building behind the scenes work as well as the physical and online campaigning that has been vital to keeping our movement going over the last few difficult years.
A wee BiS Campaign Snapshot
Believe in Scotland the momentum behind the independence movement.
The key requirement of any movement is that it needs constant momentum. We have kept pushing, during the lull in political party campaigning and have kept independence in the national conversation. Believe in Scotland was formed in 2019 to support and help co-ordinate the independence movement, we have provided the constant momentum of our movement and we still have our foot firmly on the accelerator to push this even more.
Campaigning in a time without a referendum to aim for is hard. Success depends on striking the right balance between engaging, educating and motivating the independence movement, while also reaching beyond the online indy supporter bubble to connect with undecided voters. Only Believe in Scotland has had the scale of presence, brand recognition, support and resources to consistently do all of those things over the last few years.
None of that work happens in isolation, though. A huge thank you is owed to the countless Yes groups, local activists, volunteers and campaigners across the country who have kept working for independence through some very difficult years. Their persistence, energy and commitment have kept the movement visible, active and growing in every part of Scotland.
Online - BiS has gone from strength to strength with more than 9 million online reach and half a million engagements such as likes and shares of our content already in 2026. For example, the BIS Facebook page is by far the largest non party related pro-indy Facebook Page at 152,000 followers and that is around 40,000 more than the top four Unionist political parties Scottish pages combined despite their eye watering online advertising budgets.
Our video posts, reels and instagram are rapidly growing in views and engagement and opinion and FAQ explainer style videos will be a core new focus for the rest of the year. We have invested heavily in preparation to lead a national referendum or de facto referendum campaign building a highly advanced website, email and supporter database campaigning platform Nation Builder. Yes Scotland’s slow start in indyref1 was partly due to having to build its own Nation builder system to collect supporter data - we have ours in place and it's ready to scale and campaign from day one of any official referendum or de facto referendum campaign.
Our Action Petition - End the Scottish Energy Bill Rip-Off campaign put the unionists parties on the backfoot and set one of the key agenda issues for the election. Gaining 8,350 signatures and crucially each of those signatures trigger an email to the petitioners MSP and MP demanding an end to unfair energy pricing policies that harm Scotland. There is more on this campaign to come but our petition put energy pricing and the cost of living at the top of the agenda for the Holyrood election. Our next petition will launch in May 2026.
Physical Campaigning - We will continue to organise local Indy Campaign Days and National Days of Action in support of our 143 affiliated local and national indy campaign groups. Those physical campaign days target towns across Scotland where independence support needs to be boosted and we have delivered tens of thousands of leaflets through doors in coordination with local Yes groups in the last 6 months alone. We have a meeting on May 20th with Yes Group organisers from across Scotland and will be planning a national tour of local campaign days and media stunts.
We also organised a hugely successful march and rally that put independence at the top of the agenda for the Holyrood 2026 and are actively planning our next big march and rally.
Back to the path to indy
These are the opening paragraphs of our plan from November 2025 - A perfect storm is coming for the Union, one it won't survive. There will be many twists and turns on the road but even as we head into the most unpredictable Holyrood election in history - it seems very likely that the SNP will be the largest party and be able to form the next Scottish Government. Regardless of what you personally think of the SNP - without an SNP led Government, independence is off the agenda for a long time.
In May 2026 The SNP will form or lead the Scottish Government. Plaid Cymru are ahead in many polls and have recently scored a strong by-election win over favourites Reform, which will give Plaid's Welsh Assembly campaign a major boost. As Labour's popularity drops in Wales, Plaid's grows at a similar pace - this mirrors the earlier effect on Reforms polling fortunes as Welsh conservatives dropped in the polls - Plaid therefore should catch up and pass Reform. So we predict Wales will join Scotland on the path to independence. Then one year later in 2027, Sinn Féin will win in Northern Ireland and call again upon the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to agree to an All-Ireland unification referendum. At the same time, England will be two years away from a potential landslide victory for an English nationalist/English exceptionalism, proto-fascist Prime Minister Nigel Farage.
At that point it will be clear that the four nations of the UK are heading in different directions and the constitutional conversation about the continuance of the UK will change dramatically. We can make the General Election 2029 the day that the UK ends.’
So we pretty much hit the nail on the head last year!
Momentum Points
Here is a quick summary of the nuts and bolts of the plan with some updates to the timeline.
1) BiS and the leading political parties sign collaboration agreements effectively creating a triumvirate to lead the campaign for independence between the leading political parties and the leading grass roots campaign.
Momentum - SNP deal signed - Scottish Green party deal pending.
2) For March 2026 we committed to organise a major Believe in Scotland Independence March and Rally in Edinburgh - to platform the leaders of the two leading parties of independence, alongside leading activists such as Amwar Anwar and Lesley Riddoch and the actor Brian Cox.
Momentum - This event was described by many who attended as the best ever indy march, it had a great Yes family style atmosphere and it was clearly one of the biggest in years. Deliberately organised on the first day of the short campaign period, this event made sure that independence was top of the agenda for the parties and voters at Holyrood 2026.
3) SNP win Parliamentary elections in Scotland and Plaid win in Wales - tell the story of the Celtic Exit beginning, and get all three nationalist leaders to work together.
Momentum - With 73 pro-independence MSPs elected to Holyrood we now have the largest Yes majority in Holyrood's history - this was our hoped-for outcome and our activities contributed to achieving that goal.
Next Steps - Maintaining Momentum
4) The SNP had planned to create a Constitutional Convention to run Scotland's Right to Choose its future Campaign but this plan is still being developed. The goal of the Right to choose Campaign is to:
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- Pile pressure on Keir Starmer or whomever is the Prime Minister at Westminster to accept the choice of the Scottish people or to admit that he and his government are acting in an antidemocratic manner and do not respect the democratic wishes of the Scottish people.
- Remind the Scottish people that their will is sovereign and that if Scotland votes for an indy ref or for independence that they should get what they vote for and if not they should get angry.
- The SNP have still to launch a Scottish Constitutional Convention. This was planned to be a coalition of civic Scotland, trade unions, charities, other stakeholder bodies and political parties who believe in Scotland’s democratic right to decide its own constitutional future. Not a coalition of those that believe in Scotland's independence but those that believe in Scotland's right to choose.
Momentum - Believe in Scotland will now take the lead and launch our own Scotland’s Right to Choose campaign in May 2026.
5) Believe in Scotland will officially invite the SNP and the Scottish Green party to work with us to launch a repurposed Scottish Independence Congress. An open, inclusive and representative hybrid (online and physical) meeting of all pro-independence of local and national Yes groups, Political parties, campaigning organisations, think tanks that is open to individuals within the wider Independence movement. The goal is to reunite the Yes movement and agree a way forward to independence.
Momentum - We hope to be able to announce the Scottish Independence Congress in June 2026.
6) We are calling on the Scottish government to back our plan for independence and launch the Scottish Citizens’ Convention - with the goal of ‘Creating a plan for a Better Scotland’ with a focus on a transition to a ‘Wellbeing Economic Approach’. The Scottish Citizens’ Convention can ask the Scottish people to help design a better future for their nation, to share their hopes, dreams and aspirations for a better Scotland. When we help the people co-create a shared story of a better Scotland - that will become Scotland’s national mission. We originally saw the Civic Constitutional Convention evolve into the Scottish Citizens’ Convention. However, due to the delay to launching the Constitutional Convention we now see an urgent need for the Scottish Government to focus on launching the Scottish Citizens’ Convention with the Scottish Independence Congress fulfilling the role of the Constitutional Convention.
Momentum - We will continue to push for this crucial plan to be adopted in our meetings with the pro-Yes political parties in May and June 2026.
7) In our timeline published in November 2025 we had called upon the Scottish Government to produce i-GERS for August 2026 alongside the current GERS, which will be renamed UK-GERS. This would show that Scotland’s economic future is best in Scotland's hands and thus end the Unions biggest economic lie - the misrepresentation of what GERS data means. This now looks impossible in the time available so we are now calling on the Scottish Government to make this commitment, as they have done multiple times (but have not yet delivered) previously and publish the i-GERS report with UK-GERS in August 2027.
This is the number one ask for almost all independence campaigners - see our full i-GERS plan here.
Momentum - We will continue to push for this crucial plan to be adopted in our meetings with the SNP and Scottish Government in May and June 2026. However, as it has not started yet, the earliest it can now be published will be August 2027 - alongside UK-GERS.
8) If we start the Scottish Citizens’ Convention (SCC) plan now, we can start to capture the hopes and dreams of the people of Scotland and publish an interim report in May 2027. Then the final blueprint for better Scotland should be ready to publish in full by May 2028. At that point the UK and Scottish Governments will be challenged to explain how they can deliver that plan. We already know that no ambitious plan for Scotland can ever be delivered without the powers of an independent nation. Therefore, there is zero chance that the UK government would be able to, nor would even wish to, deliver on the hopes and dreams of the Scottish people and zero chance that an incoming Reform Government would do so either. The Scottish government will implement what changes it can, but its limited powers will mean that it also cannot deliver the Scottish Citizens Convention blueprint.
9) Should the Scottish Government have been able to force a second agreed independence referendum (which would be our best option) then it will likely be in September 2028 and be based on the vision of a better Scotland co-created with the Scottish people though the Scottish Citizens’ Convention Blueprint for a Better Nation report.
10) If there is no independence referendum agreed, this gives us several years to prepare for a de-facto referendum approach at the 2029 UK General election. Then the choice will be clear, independence for Scotland based on a plan that contains the hopes and dreams for a better Scotland that was co-created with the people of Scotland through a new national conversation. Alternatively, the end of Scotland and democracy as we know it with Nigel Farage leading the UK to the far right having won no constituency seats in Scotland - a repeat of the Holyrood 2026 result where reform were locked out of the constituencies.
Momentum - Points 8, 9 and 10 are dependent on the Scottish Government agreeing to this element of the plan. If they do not agree to it or come up with a better engagement plan then gaining independence will be exponentially harder.
Everything is pretty much going to plan - will it continue?
A SNP single party majority would have been good for the independence cause but was not necessary. The SNP are right, it would have meant calls for a second referendum had the weight of precedent but let’s face it that precedent would have most likely been ignored. BiS wanted a record pro-indy majority as we are political-party neutral (within the Yes side) and that goal was achieved. Our path to independence has always been hopeful of a second referendum but pragmatically plans for a de facto approach if Westminster refuses to acknowledge the democratic will of the people of Scotland.
The nationalist leaders of the Celtic nations are now working together - our plan seems to have been followed so far and we hope that continues.
On the down side, the failure to launch the Scottish Constitutional Convention campaign was disappointing - That action was not on Believe in Scotland’s to do list but we will now seek to push forward the Scotland’s Right to Choose campaign in order to maintain momentum.
There is a lot of hard work to do. We must launch a massive and engaging Scotland’s Right to Choose campaign - not just asking for a Section 30 but calling for the powers to hold a referendum to be transferred and agreeing what conditions trigger future referendums. The i-GERS project must be launched by the Scottish Government and there is a heck of a lot of campaigning to do. The independence movement has to push now and it has to push harder than ever - to push like it is 2013 again and we have a date to aim for - sitting back and waiting for certainly will cost us everything.
As we predicted last year, a new path to independence is opening up, it leads to victory either in a second independence referendum or victory in a de facto independence referendum at the next General Election in 2029.
In short we promised to Reset, Rebuild, Reunite and Win and we are delivering our end. Join us and become a member
