The No campaign will squeak home, but, really, it shouldn’t have been this close

by Kevin Meagher

There are no perfect campaigns and while it’s a tad premature to start the post-mortem, you have to ask why Better Together ends this race wheezing and red-faced.

At the start of August it was leading Yes Scotland by 20 points. Yet despite superior assets in terms of money and foot soldiers, as well as existing relationships with the electorate, the multi-party No campaign has not been able to make these structural advantages count and that lead has melted away.  So it’s not just Gordon Brown biting his nails to the stump.

Majoring on technocratic arguments, Better Together has lacked emotional punch as well as good basic organisation. The evidence? Brown’s last-minute rescue operation promising “devo-max” after postal ballots had been sent to a fifth of the electorate. A panicked move that, to be properly effective, should have come weeks before. (As, indeed, should Brown, who was left on the subs bench for too long. His speech yesterday is described by Steve Richards in The Guardian as “mesmerising”).

So, in a spirit of evaluating why we are where we are and positing why we shouldn’t actually be here, let me offer the following:

1) It should never have been this close. Alistair Darling is fond of saying that he warned people it would go “down to the wire”. If, indeed, Darling was planning for a tight race then he has got this campaign wrong, strategically, from the very start. The aim should have been a thumping victory to close the issue down for good and avoid the so-called “neverendum”. If devolution in 1998 has given nearly half of Scots a taste for full independence just 15 years later, what sort of ratchet effect will “devo max” have on Scottish voters’ identity and sense of otherness in a few years’ time? If as many as 45 per cent of them vote for independence today, the matter will not rest. Make no mistake; we’ll be back here again within a decade.

2) Westminster should have been alive to the danger much earlier. Since 2010, there have been three secretaries of state for Scotland. Each of them, Danny Alexander, Michael Moore and Alistair Carmichael are Liberal Democrats. And each of them has been asleep at the wheel. The role should have been used to help counter the SNP’s advance in the Scottish Parliament. (It would be fascinating to see the Secretary of State’s diary entries between 2010 and 2014 because so little of value to this campaign seems to have been achieved in that time). Carmichael, especially, should have been galvanising the Cabinet to tee-up a more considered “devo max” offer much earlier, or, indeed, have that option put on the ballot paper.

3) The Tories have not delivered. Despite David Cameron’s heartfelt please to Scots in recent days, his party’s meltdown in Scotland in recent decades has meant that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has, incongruously, had limited purchase in this debate. That said, despite only having a single MP, half a million Scots still voted Conservative at the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections. Tory strategists should have spent the last few years cultivating this base and their party’s organisation for this very moment. Unfortunately, David Cameron’s detoxification of his party never included a meaningful attempt to regain a foothold in Scotland. (This is presumably why he surrendered the Scottish Office to the Lib Dems).

4) Labour has suffered by fielding a B-team in Scotland for the past decade. A similar problem affects Labour too. Much of the party’s political talent still sees a career at Westminster as the main prize. This sends the unmistakeable message that the Scottish Parliament is an also-ran institution. Against weaker opposition, Salmond bestrides Holyrood as McColossus.

5) Misreading the electorate.  As I wrote last week, there seems to have been a failure to predict that a key section of the Labour constituency would wobble.  Specifically, ethnically Irish Catholics in the west of Scotland – cradle Labour voters – who nevertheless show signs of breaking with the party on independence. There’s perhaps something about the Celtic character that makes some Scots impervious to pocket-book politics and more willing to buy into “the vision thing”.

The common denominator with all of this is that Westminster’s political class has seriously underestimated the prospect of independence and not game-played the various scenarios early or thoroughly enough. Gordon Brown’s entry into the campaign seems to have worked in at least arresting the powerful sense of insurgency around the Yes campaign in the past fortnight.

Brown has also been, by a country mile, the most articulate, impassioned and reasoned exponent of staying together.  But at what price? By throwing all sorts of powers at Scotland late in the day he has set in train a different constitutional crisis, with the UK left to make sense of its emerging variable geometry. We will only fully understand how all this promised change beds down over time. So, once again, Westminster’s short-termism fixes one problem by creating a different one.

With less than a handful of polls showing the Yes campaign in the lead these past few months it seems inconceivable that Better Together will not prevail. But they really have made hard work of it.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut


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7 Responses to “The No campaign will squeak home, but, really, it shouldn’t have been this close”

  1. Ex Labour says:

    And what of Moribund in all this ? Where was he ? When did he deliver on his side of the bargain in delivering Labour votes for the No campaign ? Or maybe he just hid behind Darling ?

    When it gets to the stage that Labour have to wheel out the swivel eyed loon to try and get things back on track it really is bad.

    The bargain between the Tories and Labour was we pay and you deliver the votes. Thats the political reality.

  2. swatantra says:

    Cameron had to choose between Labour’s 50+ Lobby fodder from the North, and a ‘Greater England’ guaranteeing almost perpetual Tory Govts. So pretty brave of him to choose the former. But then he didn’t want to go down in history as The Last PM of the UK. The Debate on a Federal Structure for the UK has been opened up at last, before NI and Wales get a bit too ambitious.

  3. Rallan says:

    I’m writing this at 7:45pm on Referendum day, and I’m not confident of a “No” vote. Remember when Lefties were saying how weak Cameron would look when Labour (via Alistair Darling) saved the United Kingdom? Well, in the event all the Westminster parties have proved useless, disconnected & uninspiring.

  4. Mr Akira Origami says:

    If there is a yes vote, Britons leaving Scotland should consider below……..

    “Manchester and Liverpool should merge. ‘Manpool’, with a population approaching 6m, would be big and powerful enough to compete with London and other mega cities around the world.”

    http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/News/Manchester-And-Liverpool-To-Merge

    ….or they might want to consider it anyhow.

  5. Michael says:

    I cant believe I am writing it but ‘Hooray’ for Gordon Brown.

  6. Tafia says:

    4) Labour has suffered by fielding a B-team in Scotland for the past decade. A similar problem affects Labour too. Much of the party’s political talent still sees a career at Westminster as the main prize. This sends the unmistakeable message that the Scottish Parliament is an also-ran institution. Against weaker opposition, Salmond bestrides Holyrood as McColossus.
    Been saying that for years. You will never dominate the SNP at Holyrood ever again unless you put your A Team Scottish politicians in the Scottosh Parliament and your B Team Scottish politicians in Westminster. I fully expect Labour to lose a couple of Weestminster seast to the SNP in 2015 as well. A large chunk of Labour voters went Yes and I think you can kiss goodbye to most of them for good.

    And what of Moribund in all this ? Where was he ? When did he deliver on his side of the bargain in delivering Labour votes for the No campaign ? Or maybe he just hid behind Darling ?
    The Prime Mentalist Brown knocked spots of Miliband and is 10 times the statesman Miliband is and it showed. Doesn’t bode well for the future really – the people that rallied the No vote being Brown and Darling – a disatrous PM and a failed Chancellor, and Labour’s current leader looking totally lost and out of his depth.

    I listened to Salmon making his speech accepting defeat on my way to work at six this morning. He made great play on the deal agreed by the Tory/Lib Dem/Labour parties of further devolution and the promise t would be done by March 27th. Believe me, if that is not delivered by the date promised to the Scottish voters you will be facing another Referendum far far sooner than you think, fought on a line of ‘London lied to you, don’t give them the chance to lie again’. I reckon Nicola Sturgeon is a shoe-in for Salmond’s job and having watched her make mince-meat of Douglas Alexander on TV at the weekend and without even breaking sweat, I reckon Westminster has now got a serious problem brewing – and dont forget, Wales and Northern Ireland will want more devolution as well. Salmond promised the people of Scotland a Referendum – he delivered. He lost and has behaved honourably. But the SNP hasn’t gone away and if anything is stronger now at grass roots than it’s ever been. The people of Scotland? Voted for fear instead of hope and lost their bottle. So London better deliver the promises by March 27th and in full or I wouldn’t even give it 5 years before this is being re-run.

    Manchester and Liverpool should merge
    Only someone who knows nothing about the total animosity and contempt the bin-dippers of Liverpool have for the skip lickers of Manchester could come out wityh that. You would have more chance merging Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic.

  7. Mr Akira Origami says:

    Bin-dippers and skip lickers.

    Like the animosity and contempt between the South Welsh and North Welsh which would put a stop to any hopes for Plaid Cymru of achieving their impossible dreams of independence.

    Well that’s tribalism for you.

    If you think South Wales would vote for independence and demotion to the Welsh Premier League and play against teams like Prestatyn Town or Carmarthen Town, you are really sad and disillusioned.

    C’mon the Swans!

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