INDEPENDENCE for Scotland is, as Nicola Sturgeon put it yesterday, a beautiful dream – and one that this newspaper wants to see come true.

As we all know, dreams can and do come true – but achieving those dreams is no easy matter. It takes damn hard work.

So the SNP leader’s promise of a new push by the party this summer on independence, once the EU referendum is concluded, is both sensible and welcome.

Putting the SNP’s activist army on stand-by in case of Brexit is shrewd tactics. Details of what is planned are scant – the public will be consulted and party members kept busy with more door knocking – but these will no doubt follow.

More important was the First Minister’s tone, which showed the approach of 2014 is no more. It is time for a change if the dream is to be achieved.

“It will not be an attempt to browbeat anyone,” she said. Instead the move to woo No voters and undecided voters will be patient and respectful, and past SNP thinking will be “challenged”.

She did not mention her predecessor Alex Salmond once – but she did not have to. She simply set out how she would do things differently.

Although Sturgeon described it as an “initiative”, the exercise is also, in truth, reactive to some degree as well.

As last week’s GERS report from the Scottish Government showed, the falling oil price left Scotland with a £15bn deficit in 2014-15, a record that risks denting the Yes cause.

Faced with such “difficult” numbers, as Sturgeon called them, the SNP cannot sit idly by.

No voters may harden their opinion, while some Yes voters may lose a little heart. No matter how much one believes in independence, it is hard to imagine such data winning any converts to independence. And winning converts is what must be done.

The First Minister says the summer campaign will convince people independence offers the best future for Scotland, and so build a strong majority for Yes.

Strong, steady work towards independence is what is needed, and her words are reassuring to Yes voters.

It is also reassuring that Sturgeon’s speech hinted at changes in the prospectus for Yes.

Many people “ultimately didn’t find our arguments compelling enough”, she said.

Privately, and increasingly publicly, many SNP politicians admit Yes was held back by its positions on the currency, pensions and the economy.

So learning the lessons of 2014 and changing tack accordingly is the right thing to do. There is hard work ahead. It will take many years. But there is also that beautiful dream – and one day it will be achieved.