Overview

Nicola Sturgeon, SNP Strategy and the Lost Decade of Scottish IndependenceHow did a nation that came within five points of dissolving the United Kingdom in 2014 end up, twelve years later, further from independence than at any time since devolution began? This is not a conspiracy theory. It is not a hatchet job. It is the first forensic, evidence-led account of the most extraordinary reversal in modern British political history. In September 2014 the Scottish National Party stood at the pinnacle of its power: an absolute majority in Holyrood, 56 of 59 Westminster seats on the horizon, independence polling 45 %, and a referendum freshly lost yet tantalisingly close. Nicola Sturgeon inherited a movement that believed its cause was inevitable. Ten years later the SNP holds just nine Westminster seats, independence languishes in the mid-30s, two clear democratic mandates have expired unused, £600,000 raised for a referendum vanished amid criminal investigation, and the party itself is fractured and exhausted. Silent Brake asks the question the independence movement has spent a decade refusing to confront: was Nicola Sturgeon the indispensable leader who kept the flame alive against impossible odds, or the silent brake who slowed the vehicle so expertly that it never quite reached its destination? Why was the 2016 Brexit mandate never used? Why did a sustained 58 % polling lead in 2020-21 produce no referendum bill? Who decided to treat the next UK election as a ""de facto referendum"" that could not possibly succeed? And what really happened to the ring-fenced £600,000? This is not the story nationalists want to hear. It is the story they need to read. Rigorous, balanced, and unflinching, Silent Brake is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why Scotland's independence moment came, crested, and (for now) quietly slipped away. Because until the movement confronts the decade it lost, it cannot win the decades still to come. ""Devastating, fair, and impossible to dismiss."" ""A political autopsy of rare clarity."" - ""The book the SNP never wanted published."" - Pre-order now. The reckoning begins here.

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