An event in Edinburgh on Saturday is billed as the relaunch of the Scottish independence campaign after the crisis that has consumed the SNP this year.

The March for an independent Scotland in the EU will hear from first minister Humza Yousaf, Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater, business figures and celebrities.

It is organised by Believe in Scotland, a business oriented organisation. The event is more about reopening the question of EU membership than it is about a new push for indyref2.

Few would have heard about the march—if it wasn’t for the fact that at an SNP independence convention held in Dundee in June, Yousaf and the SNP leadership decided to push it as the next big focus for independence supporters.

They chose it over any of the planned marches of the All Under One Banner (AUOB) group, which for years mobilised the large numbers of independence supporters—whatever they think about the EU.

Humza Yousaf didn’t speak at an AUOB march of 20,000 in Glasgow in May in order to attend the coronation of king Charles. But he wants to make this event his first address to a pro-independence rally.

 It will be a government operation to reassert control over the movement and to put forward the Scottish ruling class case for independence—as a long-term prospect that doesn’t scare big business

And there won’t be any sense of an urgent necessity to break with the system of economic and ecological crisis. EU membership would be a straitjacket stopping any real change in an independent Scotland.

It would subordinate it to the neoliberal economic regime the EU enforces, support for Western imperialism, nuclear weapons and inaction around the climate crisis. Socialists shouldn’t lend this event any support.