THOSE who migrated to Yes before the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence had all encountered their personal tipping points.

For many the process of evangelisation was not something spectacular or Damascene but rather something that had been gnawing at their souls; a slow erosion of faith in old certainties: a slow kindling. Nor would many have been comfortable with being defined as Unionist for their Unionism was truculent and barely tangible: an inconsequential thing.

They didn’t consider themselves to be Better Together with all its notions of supremacy and empire and nor were they particularly exercised by the unavoidable risks that come with striking out on your own. It wasn’t that many of them had previously been implacably opposed to the notion of independence; rather they had simply dismissed it as something that would probably never happen in their lifetimes.

Alex Salmond: Nicola Sturgeon will not underestimate 'biased' BBC during next referendum

They held a benign view of England; regarding it as a country not really different from Scotland but yet revelled in an imagined rivalry with it that wasn’t really reciprocated. The notion of Scotland’s oil and the way in which it had been used by Margaret Thatcher to bankroll her so-called economic revolution had never really taken flight. A 30-year concealment of the McCrone report which detailed how oil could have made an independent Scotland one of the richest countries in Europe saw to that.

In 2011 all that changed and changed utterly. The SNP won a Holyrood majority, and independence, which Labour thought they had gerrymandered out of Scotland’s political map, became a possibility. No longer could anyone continue to claim with any degree of certainty that an independent Scotland could never become a reality. Still, though, this wasn’t the tipping point that brought tens of thousands of Labour supporters to the cause of independence. That came with the cold reality that the UK was beginning a long journey into night, one in which a weak Labour Party was unable to lay a glove on a Conservative administration that had begun its dance with the hard-right. In 2013 there was already a perception that London had broken away from the United Kingdom and existed as the world’s first gangster superstate. This place was where the planet’s money-launderers and tyrants flocked to clean their money and wash the blood from their hands in the knowledge that they could do so unhindered and unscrutinised.

Alex Salmond: Nicola Sturgeon will not underestimate 'biased' BBC during next referendum

At the start of 2013 Goldman Sachs, whose behaviour helped bring about the financial crisis, awarded an average bonus of £250,000 to each of its employees. All that the Labour Party seemed to be offering was hand-wringing and token resistance.

At the time I wrote: “With each passing week, it becomes more difficult to support a Union that doesn't really exist anyway. Morally, it may soon become indefensible to remain in a state that rewards corruption and promotes inequality when you have an opportunity to leave it behind.” It seemed then that there could never be a better time to leave all this behind and begin to plot a better way ahead in an independent Scotland.

More than four years after the first referendum the circumstances for a successful independence campaign have become more favourable and the Union we belong to has become more unforgiving still to the weak, the poor and the sick. Our fears about seemingly endless rule by the hard-right have crystallised in the greed and corruption that lay at the heart of Grenfell. The inhumanity that fuels Universal Credit and drives thousands to fall upon foodbanks for subsistence has been laid bare.

While Scotland voted to stay in the EU we were removed against our will by a hard-right cabal who viewed Brexit simply as a means of furthering their party political ambitions. Fear and resentment of migrants and a callous indifference to the fate of refugees became the chief calling cards of the Brexiteers. The process of Brexit has been a shambles with Prime Minister Theresa May being held hostage by a right-wing cabal headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who thinks it’s been downhill all the way for the UK since Trafalgar.

Alex Salmond: Nicola Sturgeon will not underestimate 'biased' BBC during next referendum

On Wednesday the Scottish Tories, having previously committed themselves to the sovereignty of the Scottish Parliament, voted to renounce it. Their London puppet-masters will now press ahead with their EU Withdrawal Bill, which lacks the consent of the Scottish people. This alone strips bare the fiction at the root of that daft Vow and the notion that somehow we’re Better Together. And don’t let’s kid ourselves about the SNP being cautious because a number of their followers also voted for Brexit. Does anyone seriously believe that a supporter of Scottish independence would forgo that dream because of his position on Europe?

It’s now or never for Nicola Sturgeon to move on a second referendum on independence. Remarkably, support for Yes has consistently held up during a period when it might have been eroded by disillusion and ennui. The Tory resurgence in Scotland has lasted about five minutes. With no guarantees of a majority at the 2021 Scottish election the window for a second referendum was already beginning to shut but it would be a mistake to wait as long as that. No matter how disastrous Brexit will be for Scotland and the rest of the UK billions of pounds raised from sources as shadowy as some of those who were active in the Leave campaign will be spent on a PR campaign telling us how good the deal is. People will buy into the lie. The massed ranks of the right-wing media have already given themselves over fully to the task of propagating this.

Alex Salmond: Nicola Sturgeon will not underestimate 'biased' BBC during next referendum

Time is also running out for the 200,000 EU nationals who currently call Scotland home and it is slipping away from those who want to stop hundreds of billions being spent on Trident and who don’t want Scottish rape victims to re-live their ordeal before they can access child benefit.

If independence can’t be achieved against this tapestry of inequality, lies and lust for power then it will never happen and we wouldn’t deserve it anyway. Thus we can happily proceed in our peculiar little twilight zone, somewhere between a client state and proper nationhood. Where our Scottishness is defined by sporadic rugby victories over England and pretending to be rebellious by saying rude things about the royal family: an adolescent country. It’s time to put the band back together.