AS SCOTLAND honours our patron saint, Saint Andrew, across the world Scottish communities reach back to their shared roots and traditions.

Ontario has proclaimed November 30 ‘Scottish Heritage Day’; Alexandria, Virginia (USA), marks the day with blessing tartans, a piper and a reception featuring Scottish foodstuffs; for 85 years the St Andrew Society of Western Australia has helped maintain Scottish culture; and since 1877, the Hong Kong St Andrew’s Society has held an annual ball. St Andrew’s Day is Scotland’s global event.

In East Lothian, we observe the saint’s day with Athelstaneford’s service for the Saltire, Europe and the Commonwealth’s oldest flag. Inspired by a ninth-century battle, St Andrew’s white and blue cross is recognised internationally, not as a political symbol but as the badge of Scottish identity.

The wider ‘Yes’ movement embraces the Saltire rather than using political colours or logos. Driven by aspirations beyond party politics for national self-determination, a vision is evolving of a Scotland in control of its own decision-making, taking its place amongst the nations of Europe.

This is far from just the political activists’ pipe dream. According to the objective and analytical Professor Sir John Curtice, men and women across Scotland are thinking about identity in ways which separate their mindset from that of our UK neighbours. Central to Professor Curtice’s analysis is that the desire for Scottish independence on the one hand, and the support outside Scotland for Brexit on the other, represent “different kinds of nationalisms”.

Drawing on their British Social Attitudes survey (2024) Curtice and co-researcher Alex Scholes conclude that “the nationalism which underpins the demand for Scottish independence is rather different from that which underlay popular support for Brexit”.

Comparing the Brexit vote campaign and the 2014 independence campaign, they note: “Focusing as it did on sovereignty and immigration, the argument for Brexit was more exclusive in tone”, while the campaign for Scottish independence believed in inclusivity: “Scotland should pool its sovereignty with the EU... promoting a civic understanding of who is Scottish.”

Curtice and Scholes also found changes in attitudes towards Britain’s past: 65 per cent of Brexiteers believe British ancestry matters to being British, but only 42 per cent of Scottish independence supporters think ancestry matters for being Scottish.

Rather than having engineered this distinctive social evolution, SNP policy reflects it.

As activist Stephen Noon wrote recently: “The best constitutional change is one that discovers and delivers what the people actually want.”

Devolution was ‘the settled will’ of the people of Scotland in 1997: will Scottish Labour remain convinced that, conversely, Unionism is the settled will of its voters for the long-term future?