Something
odd happened in August. What looked like being a relatively comfortable victory
suddenly turned into a very close race that we were losing. I don’t watch
television, but I read about the debates. Mr Darling won the first one well,
but was then confronted in the second with a jeering audience and a shouting
match. How can a reasonable politician win against that? All through the summer
the nationalists had been complaining about bias in the BBC. I rarely checked
the BBC web site because it was so dull. Every opinion by one side was matched
by an opinion of the other. Yes said this, No said that. There was almost no
editorial opinion at all, no criticism of either side. Good old BBC worthy but
not very interesting. Why the demonstrations? Well these sorts of
demonstrations put pressure on good journalists and on a famous television
company that has a duty to be impartial. It won them the second debate for the Nationalists.
But could
one debate really have made such a difference? We had a twenty point lead in
one poll in August. Some bookmakers were offering odds in August that suggested
a Yes vote was almost impossible. But the nationalists I came across on twitter
were always very confident, many expressed certainty that they would win. How
could that be?
The problem
was that the whole debate had become irrational. I thought Better Together ran
a brilliant rational campaign. Every serious economist I read in quality
newspapers or from think tanks pointed out the problems with the nationalist’s
case. The Scotland Analysis series brought together some of the best mind’s in the
country to produce scholarly authoritative views. There were first rate minds
from business and academia writing blogs based on their knowledge of law and
the economics of everyday life. There
was almost nothing of this quality coming from the Yes side. But they were
ceasing to listen.
Something
rather sinister began to happen. Reasoned argument was dismissed as
scaremongering. Every statement that did not accord with the nationalist world
view was dismissed as a lie. This had been building up during the campaign but
suddenly got much worse in August. An economics professor from Glasgow, a world
expert, was dismissed as an Orangeman and a mason. Some of the best world economists were being
dismissed as in the pay of “Westminster”. I came across a young university
graduate who dismissed all economics as rubbish, only the word she used was
rather worse. What was the SNP doing to the minds of Scotland? The case against
independence was overwhelming. Yet with less than two weeks to go it looked as
if they were winning.
I’ve heard
that the SNP are brilliant campaigners on the ground. They certainly seem to be
well organized. They are willing to pay their campaigners large sums of money
and pay for little booklets filled with what amounts to propaganda. We had
nothing like that. I didn’t receive a penny for my writing. Nor would I dream
of asking for money. It’s something you do for love or not at all. But why were
my nationalist friends so confident. The change in fortune didn’t happen by
accident nor did it happen because of one debate. It happened because of the
work of thousands of dedicated nationalist activists.
Unfortunately
there are areas of deprivation in Scotland and all over the UK. There shouldn’t
be, but we just had the worst recession since the 1930s. There are poor people who naturally want a
better life. They were sold a dream that simply to vote Yes would cure their
ills. Of course it’s not true. There are no magic fixes in economics, just hard
work. If we grow economically, we have more to share. It’s as simple as that.
But economics is hard, often dull and most people only have a hazy
understanding of it. If you train them to think it’s all rubbish anyway, then
it’s easier to sell your own version of snake oil.
I don’t know
exactly what techniques the SNP use to persuade people to join the cause, but
it strikes me as something similar to evangelism. First you get someone to
agree with independence a little, then a little more, finally you have a
convert. The trouble with this is that you end up also with the zeal of the
convert.
This is what
we began to see in the last few weeks. Mobs were summoned by social media and
they sought to shut down debate. But worse than that, I found it almost
impossible to have any sort of rational debate online. They had a one point
lead, they had momentum and they really thought they were going to win. I was
scared.
I was scared
above all that I was about to lose my country. We fought for Britain in 1914
and 1939. What the Germans could not achieve, the destruction of the UK, was
going to be achieved by a cause I considered unworthy, paltry. I knew also that this would have a damaging effect
on the UK economy, possibly the European and world economies too. Personally I
believed a Yes vote would damage my own financial circumstances. But I would
still have options. Worse still it would damage the financial circumstances of
the poorest in Scotland who have few options. What was desperate was that I
couldn’t reach my opponents. They replied with cliché, with pat arguments, with
words that seemed to be coming from crib sheets.
I had a
think that day when we all must have thought that we might lose and changed
tack. I was not going to lose my country without one heck of a fight. Firstly I
remembered from history what Napoleon said about morale. “The moral is to the
physical as three to one.” I was determined to do what I could to cheer up our
troops. So even if I felt nervous, I made sure I didn’t show it and instead
projected confidence. The more I did this, the more confident I felt. Suddenly
something rather wonderful happened. Huge numbers of people responded in the
same way. I tweeted about 1940 and reminded people that we’d been in tough
times before and seen off worse than this lot. Of course, we were not in a war,
but the UK had never been in more danger of destruction than a few days ago.
I began
writing a positive case for Britain. It’s something we’re rather shy about in
Scotland. Personally I don’t like flag waving and find patriotism a bit embarrassing.
But throughout the campaign we had rarely mentioned Britain, conscious I think
that some Scots have little time for Britishness or don’t feel very British.
But I began thinking about what we had gone through in history and what we
would go through in the future if only we didn’t separate. I thought of some
unknown time years from now when the UK would be needed, when we would need
each other. I felt the connection with my relations who had fought for both
Britain and Scotland. I remembered the achievements that had been made by
people from all parts of the UK and from all political parties. This was a part
of me and I was going to stand up for it.
All around
the country people were standing up to be counted. We literally threw the
kitchen sink at the nationalists. Some brilliant articles were written by
experts explaining that independence was folly. I couldn’t understand how
nationalists could not see what they were doing. Then I realised they were
caught up in the emotion of nationalism. I’ve seen this in Eastern Europe. It
starts off reasonably enough. Then it gets out of hand. It is one of the most powerful
emotional forces appealing to the instinctual tribal instinct. This is why it
is so dangerous. It closes minds and makes people behave irrationally. It makes
people believe a wee blue book rather a world renowned professor of economics.
Scotland was
on the brink a few days ago. But we did something together that is very special.
We were heading for defeat but turned it around by millions of individuals
making an effort and then a little more. We fought for our country and had
another “finest hour”.
I’m going to
continue fighting. I never want to see what I saw this summer happen in
Scotland again. I want Scotland to feel less divided from the rest of the UK
and more a part of it. I want the
divisions within Scotland to heal. For this reason I have been saying to
everyone that we must be kind to our opponents. They are hurt and unhappy. Don’t
make the next few days worse for them. I want to show over the next few years
that they were mistaken to vote Yes. That Britain will become a better country
for all its citizens. I want a new Britain where power is devolved equally to
everyone. We must be fair to England and
the English.
I have never
been a member of a political party and have voted differently at different
elections. In Scotland we must cease obsessing about the 1980s. It’s a long
time ago now. It is in part this obsession with a now dead prime minister that
is responsible for the rise of the nationalism in our country. I am going to try to keep blogging from a Lib
Lab Con perspective. Whichever party I vote for in the future will be because
of the circumstances at the time. Above
all I am resolved to continue fighting nationalism. I think there is a case for
voting tactically against them next May. I will look at my constituency and
vote for the party with the best chance of defeating the SNP. I never want us
to have to go through another independence referendum. I am willing to help any
political party to achieve this goal. Sorry nationalist friends, but we must
put this genie back in the bottle.
If you like my writing, please follow the link to my book Scarlet on the Horizon. The first five chapters can be read
as a preview.
