I attended a Referendum debate aimed at the ‘don’t knows’ in Helensburgh & Lomond. The event on 5th March in Helensburgh’s Victoria Halls was packed out. The speakers, especially Alan Bisset and Michelle Thomson were excellent. Ruth Wishart and Feargal Dalton were very convincing and Robin McAlpine was passionate, well informed but maybe a tiny bit too vocal, excellent nevertheless.
I happened to be seated next to a couple of passionate ‘No’ voters who were just a bit to the right of Genghis Khan – politically.
The audience participation was total and by the end of the evening most attendees were in the YES camp and our two Genghis’s had slipped out the side door and off into the night – honest, we did not give chase! Talk about putting your ‘No’s’ out of joint!
I managed to get in my question/concern that the SNP campaign was dominating the debate. I managed to attract some SNP resistance to my concerns – but we were basically in violent agreement.
This morning I listened to Kay Adams (our new monarchy) on radio Scotland. On the referendum debate she had a ‘Better Together’ guest on responding to questions – I didn’t catch her name in passing. She reinforced the position that following a YES vote Scotland will have to apply to join the EC. This was exactly my point on Wednesday night. The SNP are giving the ‘Better Together’ lot, rocks to throw at them.
So here is the correct answer: Following a YES vote in 2014 there will be an election campaign in Scotland to decide the party in power. The SNP will offer the Scottish people their vision for a new Scotland that gets rid of Trident, shares a common currency and wishes to stay within the EC, i.e. their manifesto. If, and it’s a big IF the SNP win the election then they quite rightly get to introduce their policy pledges. By the way, I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing, although I have my own views that I will save for the 2016 campaign.
So here’s the problem. We have a passionate YES voter who is also passionate about leaving the EC. This could be me as a UKIP member who stood in London for UKIP/Ilford at the 2010 General Election. What way do I go? I saw the error of my ways and walked across to the Remain camp. At that time there was very little information freely available and I was hung up on their lack of accounting. Fortunately, I am more passionate about an Independent Scotland than the UK as an EC free zone.
But what about others who want to vote YES but don’t want an SNP government – there’s a serious risk – what a way to lose a referendum?
Alex Salmond, I have a lot of respect for you and I think you are one of the best politicians around at the moment, but please remember that if we lose the referendum we don’t get to do anything – unless of course you include grovelling and manning the food banks.
Here’s my suggestion Alex. Tell the people to vote YES in 2014 for reasons of normal Sovereignty then step away, and you hope to get their support in 2016. That way you will not lose any votes but you may gain some YES’s – albeit your opposition in 2016 – but you do like a good scrap!
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