AS Scotland slouches toward the 10th anniversary of the independence referendum, few in the SNP seem remotely enthusiastic about the occasion. If anything, there’s a distinct sense that many would rather September 18 passed without note.

Two years ago, when Nicola Sturgeon announced a second referendum for October 2023, such a scenario was difficult to imagine.

However, lacking intellectual leadership and a theory of change to achieve their ultimate goal, the timidity with which John Swinney and his government have approached the occasion is hardly surprising. It is nonetheless a compelling illustration of the depth of the crisis within their party.

The anniversary, however, provides a valuable opportunity to trace some important threads from 2014 today. The legacy of the referendum for Scotland’s young people is one such example.

Given the opportunity for the first time, 75 per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds voted in the independence referendum. The mass politics of the campaign energised a generation, most of who turned to politics for the first time inspired by the opportunity for change.

Ten years later, “change” is the watchword in our politics once more. But this “change” wears a red rosette and promises to narrow, rather than expand, the political sphere by “treading a little lighter on all of our lives.”

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party came to power in July, promising not socio-economic transformation but an end to years of febrile political turmoil. “The Scottish lion has roared,” declared Alex Salmond after the 2015 general election as a roch wind swept away the Scottish Labour Party and propelled 56 SNP MPs to London. This July, the wind changed direction.

The SNP, said Stephen Flynn, was caught up in the “Starmer tsunami.” The decade of hegemony, which began with a roar, came to an end with a whimper. With it, steadfast support for the SNP among young Scots post-2014 was cast into doubt for the first time.

In search of a safe pair of hands, the SNP installed Swinney as leader — known to young voters only as the education secretary who downgraded their exam results based on their postcode.

To properly understand what became of “generation Yes,” however, one must step back and analyse a more general paralysis. For as long as the constitutional debate animated Scotland’s politics, the ever-growing disconnect between Scots and their Parliament was obscured.

The long shadow of the independence referendum artificially inflated Scotland’s political sphere. Rather than focus on good governance, the SNP responded to the result in 2014 by courting global celebrity.

Scotland, so the argument went, was a “state-in-waiting” and should behave like one by staking out her place in the global order. Scottish “hubs” opened in Brussels, Berlin and Washington.

Nicola Sturgeon broke the US with appearances on the Daily Show, press conferences with Nancy Pelosi and selfies with AOC. The worse its domestic policy failings, the more the Scottish government sought to cultivate its international image, searching for the spotlight to evade the mounting in-tray of challenges.

What’s more, this project only really ever had room for Scotland’s central belt. The M8 corridor came to represent the entire nation as Scotland’s hinterland was expunged from everywhere but the postcard to suit a new national story seeking its place among the capitals of the European continent.

This project was typified by the SNP’s desperate attempts to save the British state from Brexit after 2016.

For the decade that followed the referendum, the SNP did the work of nation-building not with competent service delivery, infrastructure investment or cultural development, but by proving themselves reliable bedfellows for liberal capitalism and pandering to the institutions of atlanticism.

This strategy depended on subduing the energy that propelled young voters to the polls in 2014 for fear that it may upset the apple cart. Within the SNP and for the Scottish government, political agency was only required during an election campaign.

This served to enable a domestic legislative agenda which sought always to tinker around the edges of Scotland’s serious social problems, outsourcing those challenges deemed too difficult to the private sector.

These were the means by which Sturgeon could talk up her record on fighting climate change in Vogue’s glossy pages while her government was simultaneously unable to deliver a deposit return scheme.

However, the Scottish government’s defeat in Britain’s Supreme Court in 2022, Sturgeon’s resignation months later and her subsequent arrest put paid to this style of politics — dependent as it was on the worn-out fallacy of a second independence referendum.

Following the political exhaustion and dramatic demise of the SNP’s post-2014 project, the national question has receded to reveal devolution’s underlying stasis.

As Enric Miralles was designing the Scottish Parliament, he envisioned a building which arrived in Edinburgh “almost surging out of the rock.” Holyrood, hoped Edwin Morgan, would, in turn, be filled “with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its architecture.” As the devolved settlement marks its 25th year, the Scottish Parliament has long since lost those insurgent qualities.

The promise of devolution to bring power closer to Scotland’s people remains unmet. In Holyrood, “the shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards” is muffled by austerity. “The speak of the Mearns, with its soul in the land” is muted in the absence of political will. The supposed “people’s parliament” feels more distant from those it seeks to serve than ever.

I was born just six months before Miralles’ new Scottish Parliament building opened. I’m both a “Devo Baby” and a member of “generation Yes.” The above summary of the last 10 years is necessary if only to emphasise that an artificially inflated political climate is all Scotland’s young people have ever known.

Now, as it deflates, Scotland’s “pretendy wee Parliament” — Billy Connolly’s words — is on show for all to see. The “West Wingification” of Scottish politics has stalled for the moment.

This year’s Social Attitudes Survey revealed that public trust in the Scottish government has plummeted to its lowest level since 1999, but remains comparatively higher than Westminster.

Scots’ growing scepticism of their government 25 years after Parliament reconvened should be welcomed. Those young people who, for the first time, are being exposed to the “nest of fearties” which inhabits Holyrood must be encouraged to ignite confrontations with Edinburgh’s political class.

These conflicts are necessary to develop a politics keenly aware of both the immediate and longer-term causes of Scotland’s stasis, a politics which recognises the imperative of breaking with that which came before.

Only then might it be possible to construct a critical political culture which can cultivate the mass politics to which Scotland’s custodians are so opposed.