Just when you think nothing will ever change, and the dark nights and the short days of Midwinter encourage you to despair, a glimmer of light beckons. Winter is here. Spring is coming.

We are in a completely new landscape and this new ground doesn’t have faith in the previously ‘unifying’ idea of a British monarchy. This might seem like a constitutional sideline, an interesting but irrelevant bit of detail but it is far bigger than that. Without the endless bunting propaganda of coronations, births, deaths, marriages and social media distortions Britain is reduced to its harsh realities: destitution, food banks and grotesque inequality.

This is a challenge to the independence parties and movement. How do you create a movement that responds to this?