For almost innumerable reasons, personal, professional and political, my heart was in my boots earlier today. It isn’t now.

Funny how a game of two halves can lift your whole heart.

The news from Mossmorran, a hammer blow, following the loss of Grangemouth Refinery, is almost too much to bear. Watching the Apathy Party win every council by-election this past year has hurt a lot. The rise of Reform, the lack of unity within the independence movement – all of that has a toll on the ability to hope and to try to create a better future.

Footballers aren’t politicians; following and supporting the national team creates no political allegiance. And, yet, there remains hope.

Hope of a nation, so used to playing hearts out and failing at the final hurdle. 

8pm tonight felt like 17 September 2014 – but when I watched those wee bairns on Hampden Park singing their hearts out to ‘Flower of Scotland’ my heart was bursting with desperation that we might gift to them and their young pals across this country the opportunities they deserve. No more of young people hidden in tenements deprived of the chance to fulfil their potential, leave poverty behind and strike out for better days, for themselves and thereby enriching our world.

My late Dad loved football and golf. He travelled the world for work, but his favourite workplaces were Nigg, Kishorn, Grangemouth and Mossmorran. We argued politics constantly and almost his last words were ‘nae mair bullshit.’ He was right. Scotland deserves better. We need to create a new Scotland, using Scotland’s rules, made in, by and for Scotland. Westminster fails us daily; it’s killing our people prematurely, hobbling our ability to prosper and our power to change. We know, without doubt, that the majority of our people desire independence. Those of us who can make that happen have a positive duty so to do.

Westminster is at its weakest; Starmer’s government stumbles from one crisis to the next. The independence and unity movements of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are in the ascendancy. Their popularity arises from the knowledge that independence is normal – in Scotland’s case that we are a country, not a county.

The national pride at sitting in your living room joining in the belting out of the national anthem, cheering while simultaneously laughing and crying at goal after stupendous goal, seeing the scoreline and the understanding that eventually once again we are good enough – that reinforces the belief that we are big enough, wealthy enough, clever enough not just to see our boys on the field of dreams but also to feel our hearts rise as our flag rises between those of Saudi Arabia and Senegal. Make it be so next year when the majority of Scotland votes democratically for our country’s independence to be restored. 

Industrial vandalism writ large is deliberate, wasteful and wrong. Scotland should have oil funds, wind funds, wave funds, not food banks, baby banks, school clothing banks, lengthening dole queues, a brain drain abroad, redundancy cheques and P45s. It’s well past time for #IndependenceNothingLess. The ball is at our foot and the first half is over. We’re playing for the cup this time Scotland. And we will bring it home when we conduct ourselves as a national movement prioritising country over party every single time. Independence is the will of the people of Scotland and that goal, immeasurable, invaluable and entirely necessary must be our single focus. 

#LiberateScotland.