AN independence referendum is going to happen. Today’s headlines briefed directly from the Unionist camp concede that much, and Holyrood ’s largest ever pro-independence majority guarantees that democratic choice.
Autumn 2023 seems to me a fairly Goldilocks timescale: through the worst of the pandemic and with plenty of time for a proper campaign, for each side to make their case and for voters to reach their conclusions, before putting pen to ballot paper.
I get the frustration when so many in the pro-independence camp want the question settled sooner. I wanted Scotland to become an independent country in 2014. But our opportunity to put that question once more to the people needs a winning campaign to take us over the line.
Some of my friends on the Yes side might call me over-cautious. Just over six weeks ago, despite a solid effort and a campaign I was proud of, I lost an election to the incumbent Tory in Aberdeenshire West. The consolidation of the Unionist vote in that seat reminded me why patient persuasion on the constitutional question is critical to winning.
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Trends in recent polling show that we might edge a referendum on a good day. Just.
It is undoubtedly an enviable start point for a campaign to enliven, inspire and to set out what the future could hold for our nation. If the Yes campaign tries to drag voters off at a frenzied gallop when they’re more comfortable at a rising trot, then we might just give ourselves a harder task.
All that said, the No campaign has taken another fairly stumble out of the starting gates today. Well, at least in part.
Senior Tories briefed their tactics for indyref2. Both floated before, one is fairly sensible and the other frankly risible.
From the Unionist perspective, there’s little downside in appointing Ruth Davidson as the head of the No campaign. Whether Scottish nationalists like it or not, she’s charismatic and popular.
I’m no fan of her party, or her politics. But I find it hard to muster much dislike for Ruth the person. Her recent Channel 4 documentary on gambling in football — considered and compassionate — only confirmed this fact and underlined her continuing appeal in public life.
In the four years I ran the SNP’s press office, we made the mistake of expending far too much energy on trying to tarnish Ruth Davidson’s credibility: pointing to her flip-flopping on Brexit, her party’s lurch to the right, taking her marching orders from Boris Johnson, her role as Scotland’s apologist-in-chief for Tory cuts and, most recently, running away from accountability to the Lords.
Whatever truth may have lain behind all these charges, they didn’t really stick.
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She may not want the job of course — tensions between her and Boris Johnson might make it unworkable — but Ruth Davidson would make a formidable No campaign chief. If that came to pass, our challenge would be in playing the ball not the woman.
Floated in the same breath as Ruth’s captaincy was the silly, if not completely original, ruse to shift the goalposts, rig the rules and impose a Fearties’ Clause extending the vote in a future independence vote to those living outwith Scotland.
It’s a proposal which reveals a certain amount of panic at the top of the Tory party and little confidence in any positive vision that can salvage a dying Union. But if Better Together is reincarnated as Swickers’ United — banking on pro-Union votes from an estimated 900,000 Scots living elsewhere —then they’re positioning themselves as losers before the starting whistle has sounded.
Such a move would delegitimise the vote for all the self-evident reasons, democratic and moral, and leave the independence question hanging despite the political need for it to be settled.
The people living in Scotland will decide our future for ourselves, thank you very much.
We should, on both sides of the constitutional question, have the confidence in the arguments we make, and make them passionately and honestly. We must trust in the people who live here — nobody else — to reach the right decision over that future.
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