Referendum – the Trident debate

In the spirit of impartiality and as promised, I trotted off to Victoria Halls in Helensburgh on 10th.  The debate was a cross party affair with attendance from Mike Russell SNP, Jackie Baillie Labour, Maggie Chapman for the Greens, David Mundell Cons and a couple of sixth form students from the local Hermitage academy.

The event was produced by The Helensburgh Advertiser and Argyll Voluntary Action – so credit to them.  The event was well attended.  OK, it started 30 minutes late, that allowed the MPs to get their expenses sheets filled out?

The event was cleverly titled Gaels Aloud, which was ‘dope’ (sorry Mr I.Am).  I called it the Trident debate because it was in Helensburgh.  For the benefit of those not familiar with Helensburgh, if we need to borrow a cup of sugar then Fastlane/Trident is our affluent neighbour.

I know I have sounded a bit of a Yes man recently, but that is because I am only getting the passion from the Yes camp.  Here was my big opportunity to get some passion from the ‘No’s out of joint’.

Here’s the thing.  SNP want to get rid of Trident and the Better Together guys tell us that Helensburgh is a town dependent on Fastlane, the home of Trident.  I wondered if anyone would mention that the future of Fastlane/Trident was by no means certain regardless of the referendum?

That said, we were in for a ding-ding.  After a ‘fashionably late’ start I was surprised that Mike Russell SNP had not positioned himself next to the exit with his engine running.  Brave Heart! Unless of course he had some positive news for Helensburgh.

The first question was about pension guarantees.  Mike reiterated the SNP pledge on ‘triple lock’.  I was a bit rattled when Dave Mundell and Jackie Baillie reasured me that in an Independent Scotland my pension was ‘down the pan’.  Oh good! should I go now and get the bus to the Erkine Bridge?  I persevered, and countered with a rather obvious question.  I have paid my national insurance and pension contribution for more than 40 years – where did that money go?  Somewhere at the back of the room I heard a pin drop loudly.  Dave Mundell reddened, waffled and took up a new position on the back foot.

From here on in it went downhill for the Better Together campaigners.  Jackie Baillie wasted now time in asserting the position on the EC, the shared pound and Trident.  Her passion was to stay with the ‘union’, confirmed their white paper equivalent will be out soon and told us that Scotland had the best of both worlds.  I countered with a question.  What part of the best of both worlds has a country ruled by a party they did not vote in, who were virtually wiped out in Scotland and where Scotland had not influenced a Westminster election since the second world war.  Dave Mundell Cons rose to the challenge and trotted out a statistic about the aggregated number of votes in the last election in Scotland.  In his haste he forgot that was arguing for Proportional Representation … oops!

Jackie managed to gain the ire of the audience when she claimed that a No vote was the only ‘intelligent’ way to go.  To lower the temperature in the room she claimed that Mike has claimed the opposite .. that old two wrongs argument!!

 

To be fair, Dave Mundell and Jackie Baillie are almost certainly ‘whipped’ into their current stance on independence by their Westminster hierarchy.  Jackie has served the Helensburgh community well, but could become a local hero by aligning herself with a Scottish Labour party challenging the incumbent SNP for power in an independent Scotland.  This was brought home with a question from the back of the hall asking  Jackie about her political career post a Yes vote.  I felt her pain.

As the questions rained in and the responses came back I felt the panel resembled a ‘No’ sandwich.  On one side Maggie Chapman for the Greens gave us convincing and well reasoned arguments for independence.  Mike Russell on the other side kept his cool, and picked his shots while waving his White Paper with memorised chapters.  So this is the ‘squeezed middle’?

Our two Hermitage sixth former’s, Katie and Liam took a number of questions, including education and jobs.  They acquitted themselves with great skill and confidence, recognising that the status quo was sucking the best pupils out of the area.  They wanted to see a range of career opportunities in Helensburgh other than the nuclear base. As the session moved along it was clear that Maggie, Mike and our students were in the Yes camp and Dave and Jackie in the ‘Not-Yes’ camp.  Outside Scotland, Labour and Conservatives have been knocking six bells out of each other for 60 years.  Just watch PM’s questions on a Wednesday.  In Scotland, they seem very odd bedfellows? like an old married couple.

One woman in the audience gave us the poignant ‘battered wife’ analogy with the No campaign.  This went over the heads of Jackie and Dave like a high punch as they trotted out their pre-prepared ‘Not-Yes’ argument.

One chap in the audience remarked that 85% of the staff at Fastlane neither live, work nor shop in the area as they live elsewhere and do the Monday/Friday commute to other parts of Scotland or even England.  I waited for this to be factually challenged ..  and waited .. then came the next question.

One guy at the front asked about pre-negotiations and red-lines.  Maggie Chapman explained where her red lines would lie, but Dave Mundell claimed there were no pre-negotiations?  clearly the recent storms must have blown away his newsagent, his TV aerial and his internet connection.  One girl in the audience pointed out to Dave that if Osborne’s dismissal of a shared currency was not a pre-negotiation, then ‘what was?’

This is a point I will come back to later, as it plays out.  There is a very worrying and undemocratic tide of companies lining up on either side of the debate.  On the Yes side they shrug off the impact of independence saying they will make it work.  However, on the No side we are being told of a massive exit of companies and their jobs in the 10’s of thousands heading south to the safety of their 1.2 Trillion deficit.  This is the same argument that was used to retain top banker’s multi-million pound bonuses?

Back to the debate.  Mike Russell concluded with the observation that after a lifetime in politics it was a shame that it took a referendum to get the parties talking and the people taking an interest.   The debate finished on time, which meant it was half an hour short – but it was not just short of half an hour!

I came away feeling deflated.  Was this really the culmination of a 700 year struggle?  Mike, Maggie and our two sixth former’s were very impressive although Liam came closest to the sort of passion I had hoped for.  Jackie and Dave were disappointing.  I had come along to get the No argument that would enable me to ‘balance my blogs’.  I have dived into the font of politics and come up dry!

How can we make our minds up when one side says YES and the other side says NOT-YES?

Perhaps I will offer NOT-YES as a new word in the Oxford Dictionary?  Oops, just noticed it’s already in the Orwell Dictionary just after ‘double-speak’ and ‘double plus good’!

I had hoped for a Ding-Dong.  All I got was a Ding-Ding .. that’ll be my bus, I’m off!