@MR3402 Not ‘everything’, no. And in 2014 I was a keen Yes supporter with very ambivalent feelings about Alex Salmond- you don’t have to be ‘all in’. She’d speak for part of the movement and some new parts of it. But not all of it, and by no means lead alone.

@MR3402 I know what you’re getting at, but it seems overstated to me. I don’t think she’s a Tory as such, I don’t think the independence movement is left wing as such, and I think social democracy means many things and there’s no evidence that she hates it.

@MR3402 Ok, that last argument interests me. So the wider movement’s vision of why Indy Scotland would be different would lack credibility (and vigour) if the First Minister appeared to offer some version of more of the same? I’m not sure though. People know that leaders come and go.

@mehdirhasan @intelligence2 @Freedland Mehdi, as someone who generally likes and admires your work, I found your book title really disappointing and off-putting. You are clearly good at winning arguments(!) but ‘winning every argument’ implies winning for the sake of winning, wrongly putting prestige ahead of truth.