In July 2013, the then SNP leader and First Minister Alex Salmond told workers at the Nigg Fabrication Yard that Scotland's ‘political and economic union’ with England had to be changed ‘as a matter of urgency’. He continued:

Salmond listed these ‘five unions’ as:

As the journalist Alf Young joked, Salmond's willingness to preserve five out of these six unions meant that, by his own admission, he was ‘five-sixths a unionist’ (Scotsman, 27 July 2013). Just as nationalism was not the exclusive preserve of those who advocated full independence for Scotland, nor was unionism restricted to opponents of that independence. ‘Home Rule’ had always been, as Kidd observed, ‘an ambiguous formulation, capable of encompassing devolution, devo-max, federalism and independence’ (Kidd 2019: 224).

Rudolph and Thompson identified a range of options for territorially motivated groups, with only the most radical seeking ‘a new independent state’ (Rudolph and Thompson 1985: 224–5), while Brown Swan and McEwen identified two ‘ideal types’, ‘independence as separation’ and ‘embedded independence’, the latter being ‘a form of self-government which aspires to statehood, but sees that state embedded in transnational economic, political and institutional networks, including with the state from which independence is sought’ (Brown Swan and McEwen forthcoming).

Strikingly, as the SNP grew electorally, so too did its unionism. Just as supporters of the Union co-opted nationalist rhetoric in order to harness Scottish sentiment, the SNP borrowed from unionist discourse in order to win over those opposed to independence, embracing ‘the language of union, partly as a form of reassurance against accusations of separatism, but also to place their project in a broader context’ (Keating 2009: 99).