A short history of Scottish separatism

POLITICO's Westminster Insider

With the Scottish parliament election less than a week away, Jack Blanchard looks back at the history of the Scottish nationalist movement and explains how it shifted from a fringe pursuit to perhaps the majority view in Scotland.

Former First Ministers Alex Salmond and Jack McConnell — who between them ran the Scottish government for more than 13 years — discuss the collapse of Scottish Labour in the mid 2000s and the extraordinary rise of the SNP. Scottish Cabinet Minister Mike Russell explains what first attracted him to the nationalist movement in the 1970s, while independence campaigner and columnist Lesley Riddoch talks about her own conversion to the cause ahead of the 2014 referendum. Historian Dr. Ben Jackson discusses the movement’s early struggles and the development of nationalist thought, while the Daily Record’s Torcuil Crichton analyzes the cultural and global shifts behind the SNP’s march to power.