'Whataboutery' and 'Ayebeenery' are stifling debate in Scotland

It is a term which also brilliantly captures the frustrating logic of hardcore unionists – “it’s aye been like that so that’s the way it should always be”. It is a crude statement of resignation implying that we are all trapped in an unchanging groundhog day, which can never be improved.

For all its unthinking intransigence, ayebeenery is a monumentally flawed concept and easily torn apart. Take the current political car-crash. For most of my adult life, we’ve aye been in the European Union – now we’re being forced out of it irrespective of the damage it will cause to our daily lives.

Remember the days when you could get rat-arsed on drink and then drive home? It has aye been like that, until it wasn’t. Remember the fog of nicotine that once hung over pubs? It has aye been like that, until it wasn’t. Remember old men had yellow fingers? Now they don’t.

I used to pick strawberries in Blairgowrie and, notwithstanding some scheme deception at the weighing machines, it was soft-fruit that enjoyed premium status across the UK and was proudly sold as fresh local produce. It was once picked by local youth, then by immigrants from Eastern Europe, now god only knows who.

Now Scottish strawberries have to be branded under the Union flag, stripped of their specificity at a time when words like “local” and “organic” are valued around the world. It is counter-intuitive and runs against the logic of the market. Perthshire strawberries are being reduced to a commodity at a time when customers want to know all about the provenance of the food they eat.

Ayebeenery is a curse we need to challenge. It is common these days to hear people bemoan the currency debate at the height of the indy referendum. It was a damaging debate that cost votes, but I am less sure that was because of the intervention of the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, or even the finer detail of floating currencies and the Forex market. I suspect the reaction was a much more instinctive form of ayebeenery; it’s aye been the pound in our pocket, so it can’t change.

Not even, Kevin Bridges’ boldly satirical suggestion that we use the “Smackeroonie” as our currency could budge the sceptical.

As for the term “whataboutery”, its origins can be traced back to the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. The blog-forum Slugger O’Toole, a site that has bravely tried to provide a platform for localism and non-sectarian political discourse in Northern Ireland, was the breeding ground of the term “whataboutery”.

Taking its lead from Slugger, the online dictionary Wiktionary defines whataboutery as “responding to criticism by accusing one’s opponent of similar or worse faults”.

Whataboutery’s biggest failing is that it prevents new ideas being reasonably discussed. Look at how radio phone-ins, web forums and political debate shows contrive to frame complex debates around two opposing and implacable views, sometimes in the name of spurious balance and sometimes to generate emotional heat.

Let me give you three recent examples.

Several newspapers have published fatuous opinions by mostly Glasgow-based Labour politicians about a direct train route to Glasgow Airport, a long-standing transport issue within the city. It may or may not be a good idea, which would require significant new investment and have an impact on the environment. It is certainly worth serious consideration, but if implemented it would divert funds from other public realm projects.

As a citizen of the city who frequently uses the airport, I’d welcome an open and informed discussion on the issue rather than cynical sleight-of-hand. I am deeply suspicious of Labour’s policy fait accompli being floated by a political party that had control of the city for decades and did not advance the integrated transport system they are now demanding.

It makes you wonder whether their motives are about the public realm, or a form of whataboutery that allows Labour in Scotland to make deflective demands that didn’t feature in their thinking during a long period in power.

WHAT is really risible about the Glasgow Airport debate, and the equal pay dispute that preceded it, is that it exposes a contempt for the people of Glasgow, assuming that they are too dim to rumble who was in power before 2017.

Fearing hard times, I decided last year to put a coin in a piggy bank for my son’s future every time Willie Rennie appears on television demanding that “independence be taken off the table”. You’ll be pleased to know that I now live with the youngest millionaire in Dennistoun.

Whether it’s a debate about Trident or the rise of testicular cancer in Carfin, Willie believes nothing can be debated until “independence is taken off the table”.

You would struggle to find a lazier and more hollow political stance than that. In order to participate in democracy, you must abandon what you believe. Not once have I heard him make the same fundamentalist demands of the Tories – “unless you abandon your commitment to austerity, savage cuts and free-market capitalism, we cannot discuss food hygiene”.

A third example is Nicola Sturgeon’s recent appearance at the United Nations, and her subsequent business meetings in Canada and France. Some truly desperate commentators have implied that she has no right to be pursuing Scotland’s interests on the international stage, because going abroad is the preserve of Westminster and the Foreign Office. These are the very same people that accuse her of being obsessed with constitutionalism.

Sorry, but you would need to be drinking a gallon of Lanliq through a plastic straw if you think Jeremy Hunt cares more about Scotland than Nicola Sturgeon.

Some seem to think foreign trips should be reserved to UK ministers like Jeremy Hunt – and not Scotland's First Minister

Whataboutery is defined by three often subconscious characteristics – a refusal to engage with the question at hand; an attempt to deflect the discussion off topic; and a failure to engage with the deeper issues that the subject raises.

This is not the politics of democracy – it is the logic of the football forum, where fuelling division, arguing unsustainable positions and taking partisan stances is the norm.

Whataboutery pre-dates the internet but it has been rekindled by it, and as a consequence the web has transformed the way we talk about politics.

It seems almost banal to say it, but you can be a supporter of a football club without being a supplicant – equally you can hold political views but temper them or change them in the face of persuasive argument. Strange as this may seem to some, you can support independence without believing that Derek Mackay is Mahatma Ghandi.

The decline of the print press and its panicky reaction to the threat of the web has allowed the curse of whataboutery to flourish. The outcome is partial and unreasonable news, with complicated subject areas torn out of context. Free rein is given to opinionated columnists that are little better than trolls, and bogus policy ideas are floated simply because they grab headlines.

As for Nicola Sturgeon, lord knows what she was doing in Paris when she could have been papering my back bedroom or repairing broken seats at Rugby Park.

Or, as the hapless Willie Rennie might say, if she is even thinking of booking a fortnight’s holiday in Lanzarote, she must take independence off the table first.