'I REMEMBER the Referendum in 1997. I remember the ‘YES / YES’ posters which hung in the school bus stop. I remember visiting the new Parliament when I was 15.

Growing up in Scotland now, our children wouldn’t know any different. But it wasn’t always like that. Before the 1997 election there were people who believed strongly that there should not be a Parliament in Scotland. That our needs were best served by the Government in Westminster. That devolution itself was a ‘slippery slope’ towards independence.

I’m an SNP MSP, so I make no bones about my own support for that cause. What’s happening in Scottish politics at the moment, however, is that the same arguments trotted out when I was a teenager in the 1990s have returned to the fore. The Brexit vote has changed our politics - it has polarised voices. For some who voted against Scottish independence in 2014, it has become the game changer to shift their opinions. Let’s not forget that in 2014 Scotland was promised that only a ‘No’ vote would protect our place in Europe.

So we come to a juncture in Scottish politics, a crossroads which doesn’t necessarily divide people according to how they voted in 2014.

Imagine in your work place, if your role was suddenly changed without consultation? Powers you had previously were taken away? No explanation as to why. Logically, you might seek to engage your trade union, because as a worker you have rights. That’s exactly what’s happening to Scotland’s MSPs right now. Our jobs are being changed - our responsibilities removed - and if we dare seek complain? We are portrayed as ‘hysterical nationalists’, intent on pulling political stunts and not getting on with the ‘day job’ of Government.

All of that could stick if - if - my party, the SNP were the only ones who believed in devolution. But remember in 1997 it was not the SNP in charge at Westminster. The Labour Party have often branded themselves the ‘party of Devolution’. Now the time has come for these Devolutionists in the Labour Party to reappear. To fight for the Parliament they helped to create. To protect its powers from a Conservative Government which Scotland didn’t vote for.

Recently I saw fellow Fifer Gordon Brown had come back to make an announcement about independence. Quite honestly I am tired of these interventions. If Gordon Brown wants to come back to elected politics, then so be it. But carping from the sidelines about the SNP is not the fight he should be having. Scotland has moved on since 2014. And history will remember those who stood up for our Parliament and it’s powers'.