Let's deal with the good news first. Several grassroots resolutions concerning the party’s independence strategy have made it on to the SNP’s provisional conference agenda which was published on Tuesday. Lessons have clearly been learned. Under the new leadership, members who put forward ideas about how we win our party’s main goal will no longer be booed off the stage.

Recently I sat down to write a short speech about why I support Scottish independence. It struck me that it was some time since I had last done this. It was the sort of thing I did day in, day out this time nine years ago at the height of the indyref campaign. However, in recent years, the focus has been rather more on the how than the why of independence.

Tonight, I will be speaking at the first debate in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe show - The Ayes Have It! The Ayes Have It! The motion is – “This House believes Scotland should be independent.”  Preparing my speech has provided a useful lens through which to view the news that has dominated this week’s political headlines. 

It's a week since the Tories were trounced in two out of three by-elections in previous strongholds. But extraordinarily they managed to hold on to Boris Johnson’s former seat of Uxbridge by the skin of their teeth. The received wisdom is that they did so because of working class voters’ fury about Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan’s extension of the ULEZ scheme. ULEZ is the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone which is to extend beyond central London to areas including Uxbridge by the end of August.