This time last year, I was thinking that the biggest challenge was going to be the threat from Reform. But now, in just a matter of weeks, the world has changed almost beyond recognition, and Scotland’s place in it has altered as a result.

Following the US seizure of the Russian tanker off our shores in early January, facilitated by a ‘help yourself’ response from the UK government, the evidence is there for us all to see. Scotland could not be more militarily strategic on the world stage – and less in charge of our assets. What hope is there of evicting Polaris from our shores now? We, just like Greenland, have become a prisoner of our north Atlantic geography, easy prey to the whims of the gangsters now in charge across the pond.

There are some who would say that being part of the United Kingdom is our best defence from Trumpian ambitions. Really? The next UK election is probably a long way off, but if the polls are to be believed, I doubt that a Farage led UK would feel like a safe haven from a future President Vance.

Reform may be the most obviously Anglo-centric political manifestation on offer, but the rest of them aren’t much better. Just like the Russians can’t get their heads around Ukraine being a different country, the English have never been able to understand that England without Scotland isn’t Britain anymore. This simple arithmetic seems to have eluded them since the Norman conquest.

Reform, despite sticking ‘UK’ after their name, couldn’t be more inclined to prioritise matters English. Everything about them screams MEGA - Make England Great Again! Sir John Curtis, the BBCs favourite electoral analyst, speaks openly of the possibility that all three devolved nations could have ‘separatist’ governments, whilst England votes Farage into Number 10 at the next UK general election. The end of the Union?

Now I’m sure that there will be many of my independence-minded friends who might be tempted to see this as a good thing. Not me - I don’t want a shotgun divorce. Look what Brexit has done to England, creating two distinct and opposing political factions, apparently unwilling to even attempt to find common ground. In one camp, the über-nationalists bent on total isolation from pesky foreigners, and in the other, those who gaze doe-eyed and nostalgic towards France, Germany, and Denmark. A country divided and certainly not a happy one.

There was a time when ‘small is beautiful’ was a popular notion, but when our homeland is at the crossroads of Atlantic tensions between east and west, in a world where Vance follows Trump, where China swallows up Taiwan and alongside Russia, seduces the Southern hemisphere into their orbit, where are our friends?

With NATO teetering on the brink of implosion, the most obvious friendly face is Europe. But – and it’s a big ‘but’ - Scotland may not be divided on Europe, but we are definitely still divided on independence. The SNP may well be re-elected as the biggest party in the May elections, but I very much doubt that it will be with a 50% plus vote. And even if the independence parties did sneak over that threshold by a whisker, we would still be divided. More so than England was after the Brexit vote where they achieved 53.4% of the English vote on a 75% turnout.

But more to the point, why are we even considering independence with such a wafer-thin majority? Why would we even countenance a voyage into an uncertain future as a deeply divided nation? Having witnessed the glorious mess of the Brexit negotiations, after what was a loose federal union of just 47 years, what makes us think that we, in a state of deep division amongst ourselves, could easily untangle a centralised union of over three centuries?

Of course, our governance has been partially devolved since 1999. We are responsible for our children’s education, but Westminster takes over when they get a job. We can tinker at the edges of welfare benefits, but the not unemployment benefit, state pensions or employment law. We have very limited powers to vary income tax but none with inheritance, capital gains or VAT. And that’s without going anywhere near customs, immigration, a new currency, defence, joining the EU, or navigating the new nightmare of global diplomacy.

Our current setup is a long way from being a federal system like Canada, Australia or even the US. If it were, then England would have their own devolved parliament too, but instead they piggy-back on Westminster and, bizarrely, give MPs from the devolved nations the vote on English business too! So, there we have it: stuck in a quasi-devolved system that is neither one thing nor the other. One which, right from its inception, has created dispute and disgruntlement about who has what powers.

So, how could we get our country out of this impasse and at the same time begin to lay the foundations for a new ‘settled will’? - to borrow Donald Dewar’s famous summation of the 1997 referendum. My simple answer is: gradually and with compromises. Faced with the combined threats from Trumpism and English Reform, Scotland will need to build a unity of will like never before.

The pressure for constitutional change needs to continue, and only the SNP can keep that going. However, the SNP needs to accept the inconvenient truth that not enough of us want independence, a situation unlikely to change significantly anytime soon. My hope, therefore, is the SNP as the largest party in a new coalition, but not with the Greens.

My vision is the unthinkable for most SNP activists. It’s the kind of coalition that tends to happen only in times of war, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling like we are frighteningly close to the brink. So yes, I’m arguing for a Nat-Lab coalition. Swinney and Sarwar working together for the sake of our nation, exposed as we are, in a way that remains incomprehensible to England.

Sarwar has already indicated that he wants to keep Starmer at bay. He must know that his triumph in 2024 was thanks to independence minded voters lending Labour their votes to get the Tories out. So why can’t the party of Keir Hardie and Jim Sillars, a historical breeding ground for countless SNP members, join with Scotland’s other social democratic party to defend our country in its hour of need?