Outgoing First Minister Alex Salmond will today challenge SNP activists to persuade 100,000 people to join the party and quickly renew the campaign for independence.
In his final speech as leader before handing the reins to Nicola Sturgeon, he will tell delegates in Perth another massive push will lead to Scotland leaving the UK in a move likely to draw criticism from opponents who accuse him of ignoring September’s referendum result.
Party membership surged from just over 25,000 on referendum day to its current level of more than 84,000, to take numbers higher than the UK Liberal Democrat total, but Mr Salmond wants that to rise further.
He will say: “The referendum Yes vote was 45%, not 55%, but let us proclaim what each of us knows with a greater certainty than ever before Scotland will become an independent nation.
“I want to affirm what we achieved together on the 18th of September 2014, because while we lost that vote, we also won a great deal.
“September 18 2014 will come to be seen as the day Scotland took control of her own destiny.
“It was a day of empowerment, of engagement, of confidence. It reawakened in millions of Scots a sense of purpose and of hope.
“It ended forever the top-down politics of the past and ushered in a new era of participative politics the envy of the democratic world.”
Mr Salmond will reference football commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme’s famous line in the 1966 World Cup final: “they think it’s all over”.
His final official engagement as First Minister will be to attend next week’s Scotland vs England football match.
He will also reference Yates’ poem Easter 1916 about the uprising in Ireland with the line: “All has changed and changed utterly”.
Mr Salmond will add: “After the referendum, those very opponents believed that Scotland had been quietened, that we’d had our day in the sun and we should be politely put back in our box.
“They thought it was all over well it isn’t now, because in truth, delegates, everything in Scotland is now different.
“All has changed and changed utterly. Because of the 55% who voted ‘no’, many did so on the last-minute promise of radical constitutional reform within the union.
“Let us set ourselves a target. Our party had tripled in size, but it can grow further yet by reaching out further to the people.
“Let us ensure that by next May’s election the SNP reaches something which has never been done in Scottish politics 100,000 members representing the national cause.”
Delegates are expected to be in optimistic mood as the latest polls put the SNP at around 46% on Westminster voting intention and 48% on the Holyrood constituency vote.
SNP business convener Derek Mackay said: “The SNP always has and always will work to make Scotland stronger and better. As party leader and First Minister, Nicola will ensure the hard work continues.”