In Scotland, Thursday’s elections brought a clear mandate for an independence referendum. Though it will be denied or obfuscated by leading elements of the British state, the sixty-four seats for the Scottish National Party (SNP), plus eight Scottish Greens, mean a majority for independence in the 129-member Holyrood parliament. While it’s true that the SNP included the right to a referendum under certain circumstances in their 2016 manifesto, and this mandate was repulsed twice by British prime ministers, the new mandate is unambiguous. This is a matter of clear democratic principle — the right to national self-determination — around which all progressives should rally.

Now here’s the rub. When Nicola Sturgeon accepted her victory for the Glasgow Southside seat, she didn’t mention Scottish independence. Politicians in her league don’t overlook such things. Every syllable is planned and prepared. This is not how a mandate is constructed, especially if it is meant to galvanize the mass movement surely needed to advance this demand.

The SNP is thus sure to continue on its strange path of triumph; by the end of this term, it will have been in power for nineteen years uninterrupted. The party rode from the margins of Scottish politics on a wave of antiestablishment feeling, which surged around the 2014 independence referendum, issuing in a political leadership which has been able to meld popular feeling with a technocratic, pro-business agenda. And yet that agenda doesn’t sit well with a committed drive for independence, with all the disruption that would entail. This, combined with British state intransigence and the multiple expressions of the national question in popular consciousness, explains why the SNP’s approach to independence remains ambiguous.