Swinney's emotional explanation for his commitment to independence
I keep coming back to the word emotional in that headline. It tells me Swinney chose to make his own history the argument, his personal journey the evidence. That is a strange and brave move for a party leader, because emotions are messy and they do not obey the rules of a policy paper.
Political commitment is usually presented as a set of rational positions, but anyone who has watched a movement grow knows the fuel is rarely rational. I think Swinney understands that independence, as a cause, runs on a kind of felt gravity. You cannot see it, but you can measure its pull in the way people talk about it in kitchens and pubs.
What I would want to know next is whether that emotional register actually moves the undecided. Glenn Campbell's reflection suggests the speech was significant, but significance and swing are different things. I suspect the honest answer is that no one knows yet, and that uncertainty is part of what makes politics, like physics, so strange.