It would be hard to find a more appropriately named political campaign than the ‘No’ campaign on Scottish independence.
No campaign that aimed to win should ever have been let make so many and such damaging mistakes. It has been so serially misdirected that the cynic has to ask whether they really want rid of Scotland and are playing to lose?
Start with allowing itself to be known as the ‘No’ campaign. Saying ‘No’ as opposed to ‘Yes’ does to the mouth and the face what ‘Mouse’ does in place of ‘Cheese’ in gearing up for a photograph. And what is attractive about ‘No’? It’s dogged, stubborn and literally negative.
It ought always to have been a counter positive – the ‘Yes UK’ pro-union campaign we keep calling it but never seeing.
That would have created room for the union to be newly attractive, equally – differently – exciting’ with the equal possibility for change, the nature of which might be democratically shaped, not dictated or offered from on high.
But no. The union has been presented – correctly but uninspiringly – as a safe shelter.
This leaves the voter with an artificially binary choice:
- Vote ‘Yes’ for a roller coaster ride on an ill-built structure that is likely to come off the tracks;
- Vote ‘No’ for shelter from the storm.
Thrills and spills and sanctuary are each important elements of life but who wants to live only in either a fairground or a bunker?
Some days it rains. Some days the sun shines.
Choice?
Both sides are fundamentally to blame for leaving voters with such thin options to chose from.
The SNP has produced a sales pitch focused on winning a vote rather than being deliverable. This is an irresponsible gamble but may yet win the day. What comes afterwards will be a different game altogether, with no reverse gear. They did not consult the people on what sort of Scotland they wanted to see built – alth0ugh they had seven years in which to do so.
The unionists have produced an amalgam of genuine and fake risks and hazards in so indiscriminate a manner that voters cannot tell one from the other. They offer no re-imagining of the union. They are complacent. They too did not consult the people of the UK on what sort of a union they would like to see evolve – although they too had seven years in which to do so.
Whichever option we choose in September, we, the people, will have no ownership of it, beyond voting for it. We will simply have agreed to one of two inadequate propositions made by others and put to us. Those who like the thrill of a gamble and a good rom com will vote ‘Yes’. Those who are fearful and crave security at all costs will vote ‘No’.
Neither prospectus nor neither affiliation deserves respect here, although both of each is unfortunately understandable.
Selling Scotland and the Union short
The most dishonest aspect of the ‘No’ campaign is that it has recently chosen to engage in an auction for voters’ favours, with its various members offering inducements for votes.
Unlike the SNP, which is in a position to deliver on its promises [were they deliverable], none of the unionist campaign members has comparable authority. They are not a government but a mix-um-gatherum of most of the major political parties – and each of them face a UK General Election next year. None of them can promise anything.
What they can do – and have done only once, is when the economics chiefs of all three current main parties, George Osborne, Ed Balls and Danny Alexander, each made it known that a currency union with an independent country will not happen for reasons of the real risk of the fiscal stability of the UK.
Everything else has been single party ‘special offers’ which none of the sellers can guarantee being in a position to deliver after the May 2015 UK election.
Part of this is fundamentally depressing. It buys into the SNP certainty that Scots are there to be bought – that they will settle for the promise, however insecure, of some modest personal boon in exchange for their vote. So an auction it is. And if this endless campaign is all about £500 quid per annum here or there, its hard to respect a country whose people would make so grave a decision on the basis of more pocket money.
Part of this ‘No’ campaign bidding is clueless, with no real idea of what is attractive to voters. If the notion of greater devolved taxation powers were understood by the electorate at large as being important, the SNP prospectus would never have been given the chance to get any hot air in its balloon. The only real vote winner in the word ‘tax’ is if it comes accompanied by the word ‘cut’.
Part of the ‘No’ bidding is also politically unintelligent in no mean degree. Offering greater devolution in the event of a ‘No’ vote is the very opposite of presenting the union as worthy of affiliation. It effectively says: ‘We know you want to be away from us but if you choose to stay with us we’ll let you get even further away than you are at the moment.’
How exactly is that a ‘pro-union’ position?
That itself is an anti-union position coming bizarrely from the centre – since we never got to first base in considering political variations of union, like federalism; and since the biggest and most influential of our partners in the union, England, has no devolved authority whatsoever.
Not partners
The so-called partners making the so-called union case through the recent spate of ‘special offers’ are not bidding for Scotland but bidding to secure their own vote in the 2015 election.
They are not speaking together as one, in a common commitment to collectively agreed positions on the outcome of the September 2014 Referendum, whichever way it goes.
The unionist parties are likely to lose Scotland by default if they carry on this way. The meek will inherit the dearth.
In 2015 they may find therefore themselves standing in the last ever General Election contested in the four home countries. This will see an elected cohort of MPs many of whom will leave the premises for good on 24th March 2016, one year into a four year term; and possibly causing a change of administration in early term in the continuing UK. These islands may see a generally chaotic period during which our stock will fall, severally and together.
There was a different and a supportable case to be made for independence.
There was a different and a supportable case to be made for the union.
Neither case has been made. Neither case will be made. All that each side wants is simply to win; so buying the votes, one way or another, is the mutually accepted modus operandi.
It gets harder to care what happens.
