STUART Campbell, of Wings Over Scotland fame, is thinking about starting a political party, but I say to Mr Campbell: No! we Scots are proud of the nation we happened to be born in and the last thing we want is another party coming up here from England and trying to tell us what to do. We say to you: go homeward to Bath and think again.

(PS. I’m a little bit worried my attempt at humour here might not go down well with Mr Campbell. Does anyone know: is he cool with jokes at his expense or does he take himself very seriously?)

Anyway, the more important question is: how seriously should we take his theory, which is that a new party could maximise the pro-independence vote at the next Scottish election? Mr Campbell thinks the new party may be necessary because he knows there’s a risk the 2021 vote won’t produce an independence-supporting majority. And so, he’s thinking a new pro-yes party could bring in more regional list votes for the cause.

On the face of it, the theory seems sound. The Holyrood electoral system was set up with the aim of making it difficult for any one party to get a majority which means a party that performs well in the first-past-the-post seats will find it harder to make gains on the regional lists.

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You can see this from the last election. The SNP did well in the list vote, but because it also did well on first-past-the-post, it was the other, mainly unionist parties that picked up the list MSPs. Mr Campbell’s idea is that a Wings party could change this by taking some of the list votes that are being “wasted” on the SNP, therefore increasing the chances of a Yes majority.

But the theory has over-looked two important factors. First, the SNP won’t stand for it. At the last election, they ran a “Both votes SNP” campaign based on the theory that if they lost some first-past-the-post seats, they could pick up seats on the regional list – and that was despite the fact there were other pro-independence parties standing on the list, such as Rise and the Greens. Adding another party based on Wings is not going to change that.

Second, Mr Campbell’s theory is based on the idea the SNP will broadly retain the number of first-past-the-post seats they have at the moment, but that’s far from certain. Whether we like it or not, the next Scottish election will be fought on a single issue – whether the pro-Yes parties should be given a majority to demand another referendum – and in that scenario many, if not most, supporters of the union will vote tactically against the SNP, and that means the party could lose some first-past-the-post seats. Combined with losing list votes to Wings, this could put a pro-independence majority at risk.

There are also particular problems with a party based on the Wings brand, the main one being its aggressive image. Mr Campbell’s traditional response to this has effectively been “chill, it’s just banter” but the SNP leadership knows the more aggressive nationalists have damaged the cause in the past and a party based on Wings would only heighten the problem. Yes, any Wings party would only be an outer limb of the Yes movement, but political poison could spread quickly through the bloodstream.

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The Wings party would also do something else damaging: it would draw attention to the dis-satisfaction within the Yes movement – indeed, the division appears to be one of the reasons Mr Campbell is considering starting up the party in the first place.

In his blog discussing the idea for example, Mr Campbell said SNP supporters didn’t want to vote for “extreme radical fringe parties” like the Greens because they don’t want to “fill women’s changing rooms and toilets with male rapists”. This, of course, is a reference to his opposition to the proposals to allow trans people to identify their own gender, but it’s only one of the SNP policies he dislikes.

You might say: who cares about these disagreements over policy as long as everyone agrees on the bigger aim of independence? But part of the success of the yes movement in 2014 in growing so rapidly was that the different groupings more or less fell in behind Alex Salmond. A new Wings party, on the other hand, could provide a mouthpiece to those within the independence movement who are unhappy with Nicola Sturgeon over a range of issues: among them, trans rights, the timing of a second referendum, and the swing towards austerity, as some see it, that was signalled with the Growth Commission. If the yes movement is, and looks, divided – particularly over the economy – voters will fear a Brexit-style debacle and will be more likely to vote no.

And, finally, we have the image problem: what would a Wings Over Scotland party actually look and sound like? Famously, David Cameron once dismissed UKIP as a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists and there’s a real danger that a Wings party would attract people from the extremities of the independence movement in a similar way.

You know the ones I mean. The ones who are blatantly anti-English. The ones whose arms ache from waving saltires. The ones who believe Mr Campbell didn’t really lose the defamation case against Kezia Dugdale. And the ones who suggested that the women who accused Alex Salmond of sexual assault might have “thrown themselves” at him. Presumably some of this bunch would stand for the Wings party and what a sight that would make.

I appreciate, of course, that none of this may happen in the end, but the success Mr Campbell has made of his blog would suggest there’s a decent chance of him making a success of a party too.

The problem is that, in real politics, the megaphone he’s been pointing at people who think like him will be turned on an entirely different audience: voters who need to be convinced there’s a coherent, rational and calm plan for Scottish independence.

Those kind of voters are unlikely to be impressed by Mr Campbell’s aggressive style. The problem for the SNP is that some nationalists might be.