INDEPENDENCE at all costs, independence above all else. Independence, independence, independence. Everything must be sacrificed on the altar of independence. It all smacks just a little too much of exceptionalism.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a supporter of independence. I believe – note the caution of that verb “believe”, though, it does not come with the fervid certainty of “I know” – I believe independence will make our country a better place. But I do not lay everything down before my belief, like a supplicant to a god.

I am no nationalist – that’s why the open, embracing Yes movement attracted me. I am an internationalist, which is why the peril of Brexit terrifies me. If I had to chose, my belief in internationalism would outstrip my belief in independence. There are plenty like me – although a split is increasingly opening up among Yes voters over Europe. It was a fissure which has been turned into a fracture.

Believing in a second vote on Brexit, and believing in independence, should not be mutually exclusive – in fact for most voters they easily go hand in hand – but some in the SNP would now have you think otherwise.

When the First Minister set her support behind a second EU vote, saying the SNP will back a referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal, many were heartened. It was the right thing to do – it was in Scotland’s interests, and the interests of the rest of our neighbours in the UK. But bit by bit, members of her own party are undermining Nicola Sturgeon – out of the narrowest view of independence. In this they share the position of the most ardent Brexiters: that their belief comes first no matter what, even national interest. And this I do know: stopping Brexit is in Scotland’s interest.

Opposition to the FM’s support for a “People’s Vote” grew when Kenny Gibson, MSP for Cunninghame North, became the latest Nationalist politician to claim it posed a risk to independence.

Mr Gibson now joins the MPs Pete Wishart and Angus McNeill, as well as former cabinet secretary Alex Neil, MSP. They have all expressed concerns that a second EU referendum would set a precedent which will allow Unionist parties to call, in the event of a successful Yes vote, for another referendum on the terms of any independence settlement.

Mr Gibson rebelled against the party whip and did not support a Holyrood vote for a second Brexit referendum. The vast majority of SNP MSPs got in line with LibDems and Greens to back an amendment calling for a People’s Vote. He says he wants a second independence referendum as Brexit has created “material change in circumstances”. Yet when it comes to Brexit, he says nothing has changed “materially”.

Mr Neil, a Brexiter who believes the SNP was “bounced” into supporting a People’s Vote by the First Minister, says: “What I am first and foremost is a Nationalist.” He says he judges everything on the basis of whether or not it advances Scottish independence. As such, he felt a People’s Vote “will be used against us by our opponents”.

The cadre opposed to a second EU vote undermine both the First Minister and their own party just at the point when Ms Sturgeon and the SNP could take the lead when it comes to sanity around Brexit. It feels as if they harken back to the bluster and bravura of Alex Salmond rather than the calm and level-headed pragmatism of Ms Sturgeon.

In logic class, not much of their position would stand up. They oppose a second EU referendum, but want to see a second independence referendum. If you want one, you have to accept the other – to do otherwise is to show the symptoms of a severe case of Scottish exceptionalism, and a belief that democracy is a one-way street.

To support a second EU referendum underscores the very reasons to have a second independence referendum – not only have circumstances changed dramatically regarding both Brexit and independence, but in both cases the public voted on a false prospectus. In the European vote, it is clear the public were lied to on a grand scale, and in the independence referendum the nation was told that a No vote would keep our place in Europe – that too was obviously a lie.

The anti-People’s Vote contingent in the SNP may not mean to project the idea that an independent Scotland would care only about itself, but that’s what such a position seems to say: it’s Scotland and independence first, and the Devil take the hindmost. There is the sense that lifeboats are being managed and only Scots should get in them. It was precisely because the independence movement did not come across as narrow and self-interested to the exclusion of all others that it gathered so much support.

To be asked to chose between independence and a People’s Vote is to be presented with a phoney and narrow political dichotomy which does not reflect well on those sections of the SNP espousing such a position. It is already a party in which the loudest mouths often dominate both inside and outside Westminster and Holyrood. Their noise does more to alienate than attract. To appear so narrowly self-interested that one would throw the rest of the inhabitants of these islands out of the lifeboat – because that is what a People’s Vote is – in order to prevent a follow-up referendum should Scotland ever gain independence, is a position designed to drain support and hurt the cause of independence. It woos no-one.

Logically, this all means that should the day come when Scotland votes for independence, then we will have to accept a confirmation vote on the final “separation deal”. This should be valued because it is the fair and decent thing to do. Winning a referendum is one thing, completing a deal in the national interest on the result of a referendum is quite another. With Brexit, it is clearly in the national interest that a final deal must be confirmed by the people. It is only right to establish that principle now and abide by it in future. The will of the people is not fixed in stone, it changes, that must be recognised, for that’s true democracy.