… We didn’t have a strategy?
That was where I left it, but I can’t just leave it there.
Strategy is a bit like tactic but subtly different. Tactic is something you often keep to yourself because you don’t want the opposition to know your play.
If strategy is mistaken for tactic and kept a close guarded secret – it fails, pure and simple. If a strategy is going to be successful it is essential that it must be totally visible, fully understood, communicated and religiously followed. If your strategy is really good this will never be a problem. If your strategy relies on covert actions it was a pretty weak strategy in the first place.
If I was playing snooker with Steve Davis (who?) and he said his strategy was to keep leaving me long balls because I was useless at them then a) I could not stop him, b) I would be at an immediate disadvantage because I knew he was great and knew he had a winning strategy. Quite often, if you are really good and have a winning strategy, letting your opponent know can often unsettle them before the ‘get go’.
I needed to clear that up in case anyone thinks giving away your strategy is a bad thing, I don’t believe it is. It actually it demonstrates confidence and determination to win and quickly becomes part of your winning strategy.
Achieving independence for Scotland was a massive and complex ask. I required an over-arching or super-strategy. Lots of other strategies would sit beneath this. We had most of these strategies but we did not have the super strategy.
If we had had a super strategy in REF18 then every single person involved in the campaign from Derek Canavan, Blair Jenkins, Alex Salmond, everyone in YesScotland, everyone in the SNP, the Green Party, Scottish Socialist Party, Labour for Indy, Women for Indy, Trade Unionist for Indy, all the blog sites big and small, all the Facebook pages, Twitterers, the personalities like Lesley Riddoch and Tommy Sheridan and all the ordinary folk resident in Scotland that supported the quest for an independent Scotland would all have been following the same super strategy.
WE WERE NOT, PURE AND SIMPLY
This takes nothing away whatsoever from the entire movement and all the people I forgot to mention. The campaign we just experienced was arguably the best political campaign anywhere, ever. I am humbled to be able to say that I played a tiny part. I also witness many of our leaders and professionals from all walks of life become giants in their own right. If you did not see it then try to watch BBC Question Time from Kelso or the last one from Liverpool. Lesley Riddoch made me proud to call myself a Scot. That’s how pollitics should be done. And John Swinney and Janet Street-Porter were also extra-ordinary. And at Liverpool, Alex Salmond shone like a beacon of statesmanship and the English crowd loved him.
Even without the super strategy, to achieve 45% {and who knows it may have been more if you get my drift?} of the vote against the full might and treachery of the British Establishment, the entire (almost) media, big business, so-called celebs and the ‘recruitment’ of world figures like Obama, Putin, The Pope, sort of The Queen etc …. I find myself saying,
DID WE ACTUALLY ACHIEVE 45%? HOW MARVELLOUS WAS THAT!
Now just think what we could have achieved if we had had a super strategy in place.
Some people, especially those eternal optimists amongst us may agree that that could have carried us over the line. Those less optimistic or should I say more normal people may remain to be convinced without more details. I will try to outline some of the aspects of a super strategy that could have made a difference and hope to convince a few more people.
Warning: Back to my original point on keeping this to ourselves. If anyone is reading my blog and opposed to independence, please read on. If I have any influence and if anything remotely similar to my approach is adopted then you need to know that the game is up, we will have our independence and we will have it sooner than you think. So here it is …
THE SUPER STRATEGY
So what about this super strategy. If we had had one, as you read on you will hopeful see what was missing. I don’t want to dwell on failure. Our failure on 18 September gave us a tremendous opportunity, and remember this was our first ‘independence’ referendum. We know now first hand what the opposition are likely to get up to, we know now, if we didn’t already, what they are capable of and you can be assured that they will use pretty much the same tactics as before; because it worked.
It may be useful to read my short blog, and there are other well informed ones, on what went right and what went wrong with the referendum [read it]. It may be a hard read, but nothing in my life was harder to read than the announcement on 19 September 2014. After that, life can only get easier.
There are a number of routes to full independence. I am only dealing with the scenario whereby, for whatever reason and whenever, we have a new independence referendum. To that extent I am suggesting 5 lessons – this is my ‘gimme 5’. They are explained in more detail further on.
LESSON 1: The campaign is cast and the hierarchy is in place. The campaign for Scottish Independence could be called The Final Push. Step 1, the super strategy must be put in place. If we mess up on this first and vital step we may as well pack up now!
LESSON 2: Every person, every group and every organisation with a vote, with no exceptions, comes under The Final Push. I would go even further and target young people who have not reached the voting age with maximum effort – and I mean maximum. These young people are some of the most important benefactors of independence, they will soon have a key role to play in its success and we must not let them down – remember they may be the ones who chose our nursing home? Young people, not of voting age by the next referendum, nevertheless have a huge influence on their parents and other adults. I can almost hear a 12 year old protest to their parents, ‘hey, that’s my future you’re playing with?’
LESSON 3: This is NOT A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN and any attempt to politicise it will be met with total opposition. This campaign is a VISION campaign and every part of the campaign however big or small plays into the VISION.
LESSON 4: We stick to the super-strategy. We only deviate or adapt if that has been planned for. We treat everything outside the super-strategy as a threat, an attack an attempt to steer us of course. We keep our eye on the prize, 110% focused and with the believe that this will achieve our goal.
LESSON 5: Once we have a date for the next referendum we can put the super-strategy in place? NO, NO, NO that would be a huge mistake. We KNOW we will get another referendum so we begin now to build the super-strategy and when we have the date of the next referendum confirmed that is a key trigger to mobilise that stage. By that stage much work will already be done. We will all be ready, like an army waiting for the order to ADVANCE TO INDEPENDENCE
We must follow the 5 lessons above. I will try to expand on each lesson and quickly we will see just how much effort this will take. Quickly we will realise what was missing before, but we will take comfort because it will not be missing now.
LESSON 1 – The Super Strategy
Many Scots people, groups and organisations have a common goal; to achieve independence. Each of any one of these may have a strategy. SNP, Greens, SSP, Wings, Joe Blogs may all have their own perfectly good strategy. If their strategies are not in concert we risk being and looking disunited, ambivalent and striving for different goals. Of course we all do have different goals. The SNP have their political vision as does the Green Party and SSP. In an independent Scotland most factions will contribute to the rich tapestry of our society. However, to get there we must first achieve independence. This is ONE goal and therefor it must be ONE STRATEGY. So step one is to pull together all the parties into a single unified group. For this to happen we must have leadership, communications and a willingness from everybody to relinquish their individual aims and contribute towards this single aim; [Stewart Hosie SNP MP has called it a YES ALLIANCE which I think is a great title] at least until their is a single structure in place and everyone has their role. This is not a massive task, it’s a massive, massive task. If we can achieve this one step alone we are well on our way. If we can achieve this, it will send shock waves all the way to Westminster and beyond.
We must not underestimate the ‘ask’ above in relinquishing power until we have properly unified.
THAT IS WHAT WE DID NOT DO FOR 18 SEP AND THAT MAY HAVE COST US THE REFERENDUM
Think about it? Was there a direct line of communication between Alex Salmond and for example, Lady Alba? Did Wings pick up the phone to Blair Jenkins and discuss their next article? Did a message come down the line telling us all how to respond to Darling’s nonsense on shared currency?
WELL, THERE BLOODY WELL SHOULD HAVE BEEN!
If we are going to achieve independence, sorry, when we aim to achieve independence we must work HARDER, we must work SMARTER and we must work TOGETHER.
Sorry folks, but ‘chip in’, ‘doing my bit’, ‘let me at them’ doesn’t cut it. We are struggling for a nations’ independence. Every single person and I mean every single person must be totally aligned. Here’s a thought. How long does it take to break 20 hairs on your head? a few minutes maybe. Twist them all together and try pulling them apart? As they say, ‘if we don’t hang together we will all hang separately?’ Better Together pulled us apart with the oldest trick in the book, ‘divide and conquer’. We must be ONE.
This first stage is very, very difficult. How do you begin? In my life as a programme director I have seen a life time of groups forming for all sorts of reasons. If I have learnt anything it is this. Let’s say 10 people get together to perform a task. One steps forward and takes the lead and begins to delegate, organise and demand. I just know they are going to fail. If on the other hand, a leader comes forward and facilitates a discussion where people elect their group, select their leader and agree their roles, I just know they will succeed.
In Ref18 we got a clear signal that the referendum was agreed and signed up to. That was the point when the ‘forming’ on a grand scale should have happened. IT DIDN’T. The SNP took up the mantle and continued from WE HAVE A REFERENDUM to THE CAMPAIGN IS UNDERWAY … in one seamless step. Huge mistake. (By the way, not a criticism of the SNP, a criticism of us all for letting it happen). YesScotland was formed in a very organised manner. This was absolutely correct but far to narrow. Yes Scotland was really the ‘grass roots’ campaign. Brilliant job, but only a small part of the job. The Green Party joined in as a ‘ME TO’ group like so many others.
WE FAILED TO PLAN AS ONE- SO WE PLANNED TO FAIL AS ONE
I am not criticising the campaign, far from it. This was the best political campaign I could ever have imagined. But it fell short. From the outset, and my very first blog expressed a frustration that a YES vote was not a vote for SNP. This point did not resonate with the people of Scotland until a few months before the referendum vote. From the ‘Get Go’ YesScotland should have been the pinnacle. The people of Scotland should have seen Dennis Canavan as the leader and keeper of the super strategy. The hook at the top of the triangle if you will. The Chairman of iScotland plc.
The Super Strategy should have identified all the players, what was their role and how they feed back upwards to the Chair.
This was a far cry from what actually happened. The SNP had 2 hats. They were running the Government of Scotland – great. But in parallel, they were running the YES Campaign or at least seen by the media, Westminster and Better Together as spearheading the campaign. This was not an error. This was not a misconception. This was a deliberate act by Westminster and their lackeys to politicise the referendum. The SNP should have fought vehemently against this and pointed upwards to iScotland plc. iScotland plc should have demanded that Westminster talk to them directly on all matters referendum and not the SNP, further down the pecking order. It was incumbent on iScotland to de-politicise the referendum.
THIS DID NOT HAPPEN – THIS WAS A HUGE MISTAKE – THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN AGAIN
if you are still with me you are probably getting a feel for the super strategy. Dennis Canavan with his referendum advisory team should have been telling the SNP what was expected of them, not as Scotland’s Government but as key players in the referendum campaign. He should have been telling the Green Party and the SSP and Labour4Indy etc, etc what was their role in the campaign. He and his advisory team should have been guiding the primary blog sites, who had elected to support the Campaign, on the key messages to put out and when.
iScotland should have had a blue print for every new joiner to the campaign, whether they were groups, individuals, Facebook pages, bloggers or Tweeter, or whatever else, telling them how to engage, what their role would be and how they measure and assure their effectiveness.
NONE OF THIS HAPPENED. THE NEXT TIME IT MUST. WE MUST HAVE A SUPER STRATEGY.
LESSON 2: The Engagement
Lets assume we have the super strategy in place. This is the infrastructure, we now need to begin the process of engagement. We need to begin the task of identifying the work that needs to be done. Much of this will be ongoing but it is essential that we start building the rich picture of everything we need to do, what it will entail, when we need to do it and and most importantly, who will do it. Of course this will change along the way, it will be a ‘live’ work in progress, if you will, but this is the life coming in to the campaign, this is the ‘verb’. This is the super strategy coming into being. For example, one of the first things we need to do is raise funds. We need to identify an expert at raising funds, and the structure to control how these funds are allocated, used and accounted. The engagement process is hugely important. It goes on and on and often does not complete. This is the transition from paper to people. We need to have the hierarchy in place to get restarted, and here there are some vital learnings. Every single role is important – none more than any other. Some people are born leaders, so do’ers, some thinkers and reflectors, some planners, some very vocal and outgoing people who like to communicate. Everyone has a job. Respect for each others’ role goes all the way to the top and all the way back down again.
There are many essential components. I have mentioned funding. But we must recognise a super strategy that breks down to a number of sub strategies – these are basically just plans with timings, owners, and attributes – capable of rolling back up into the single objective. We must have a Communication Plan, we must have a live Risk strategy under constant review, we must constantly update our SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). We must have performance measures in place that constantly provide an accurate picture of how we are doing. We must have Relationship Management to recruit our supporters, sympathisers, influencers (especially within the traditional Media and we absolutely must identify and understand our enemy, who they are, what they are up to and their weaknesses. Something we take for granted but must never, ever take for granted is Social Media. We must harness the power of Social Media. We can only do this if we have a Social Media strategy. Guess why we need the youth involved – this is their field of expertise. In REF18 we had nothing but presence on Social Media. We presided over Facebook and totally dominated Twitter. Unfortunately, we were all talking to each other. We were introverted when we needed to extroverted. We have a massive range of sophisticated, high quality blogs that pretty much dominate one faction of the closed broadcast media. We need to exploit their full potential and get behind them. I have kept the best for last. We have the best, most savvy, most passionate and high quality people on our side at all level. REF18 brought to the forefront a wide range of some of our best spokespeople.
If I learned anything from REF18 it was the recognition within the movement that every single social barrier was swept aside. Overyone was equal regardless of gender, age, orientation, ethnic original, political persuasion, education of background.
WAS THERE EVER A BETTER START FOR A FAIRER MORE EQUAL SOCIETY?
Remember, how we achieve independence will be a blueprint for how we continue as a society. We don’t become a fair and just society once we achieve independence, we become a fair and just society as a means of achieving independence.
When we are engaging with people there are some common sense things we must recognise. Every day in Scotland a Yes voter dies. Every day a No voter dies. Statistically, they will be mainly older people. Every day a young person reaches voting age. Smell the coffee? We must reach out to our young people. We must educate them in our quest. We must ask them to educate us. We know a lot about the past, but they know a lot about the future. They are the one who will have to live in the future; so we must create it together.
LESSON 3 – De-politicise
Life has taught us some stuff. Gravity says that things fall down. Science tells us that night follows day. Common sense tells us that everything becomes political – eventually …
… AND THERE’S THE PROBLEM
Politics is a dirty business. Politics is ultimately corrupt. There is no right or wrong in politics there is only POWER. Politics is dominated by powerful people.
The minute anything becomes political it becomes the domain of the powerful, the corrupt and the self interested. Take the example of REF18. The question was ‘should Scotland be an independent country? When I got my ballot paper, there it was; the question. I examined it, turned it over, held it up to the light, magnified it – I felt cheated. Where was it. Where was the real question. Where was the question that dominated the debate in the media, across the politics and in everyone’s conversation, ‘Can Scotland share the currency’. No sign of it. I was stumped? I had my answer ready and they had forgotten to put the question on the ballot paper.
Did you find the same thing? What the hell went wrong? So here’s the thing. The corrupt and self interested political dictators know all too well that they must always take the game into the political arena where they call the shots. A quick glance at the White Paper, a quick peruse of SNP policy and there it was; ‘Scotland will continue to use the pound’. If you shout ‘Better Together’ the echo comes back ‘No they f*cking well won’t’… and that’s politics.
Analysis by Lord Ashcroft stated that the dominant issue that determined the referendum was ‘the pound’. This makes me furious. I said this over and over and over again. I blogged this till I was blue in the face; we don’t have a shared currency and we never have had one – why did the parties on either side of the debate make this an issue? I was a lie, made up because the term ‘currency union’ had ‘union’ in it. Ugh!!
This is what happens when we allow the scourge of politics and politicians into a the decisions we take about our country. Politics and politicians come and go. They change if the day ends in a ‘Y’. This is neither a means nor a method to achieve our ambitions. Anyone who has progressed their career (if this is progression) into management will quickly realise that they are now in the realms of politics. Most people hate it and quickly become its victims, sooner or even later!!
We must be ever vigilant to dispel any attempt to politicise the debate. Independence for Scotland is a vision, an ambition and it’s a passion – keep it there until we achieve our goal. Then we can re-write politics to serve the people of the country and its collective ambition.
LESSON 4 – Focus (and don’t believe the hype)
Easy to say – near impossible to do. But do it we must. The opposition will do everything in their power, and more, to steer us off plan.
First of all, I say don’t believe the hype. Feedback is vital in almost everything we do. It is essential to enable us to adjust and trim our approach to overcome changes. One of the most basic tricks played on us by our opposition was to tell us we wre doing really well – especially, and most importantly, when we were not. This is a trick we play on our kids. It works ok on the kids because they thrive on encouragement. But, we adults are often suckers for that kind phrase, ‘everything is fine, you are doing really well, don’t change anything’ …
BECAUSE YOU ARE FAILING AND WE WANT YOU TO STAY THAT WAY??
During the REF18 campaign I read so many reports that told us how well we were doing in places like Orkney and Shetland. Saltires were flying everywhere. Did anybody ever think this might have been a strategy by Better Together to lure us into a false sense of security? Paranoid? perhaps. But more importantly, did anybody check? That’s a NO
In future, we must recognise the vital role of feedback and ensure we have quality, checked and assured feedback that enables us to refine our approach.
Back to focus. Remember the question, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ What do we imaging the claim that we will be out of Europe and at the back of the queue was? An attack on our focus. The answer should have been pure and simple. The referendum is not about Europe. An iScotland will put this to the people in a referendum to determine whether we want to remain in or not. And if someone claims that we will be kicked out, we simply laugh it off – it can’t happen – really, it can’t happen. Gerard Batten, UKIP MEP for London, in one of his recent publications ‘The road to freedom’ explains why, under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty 2009, even with an OUT vote in the ‘will never happen anyway’ referendum on Europe in 2017 the exit will take so long most of us will never see it. The EU has crafted the process such that they kick your exit application into the long grass, then into the bunker, then into the river, then claim your ball is lost. Better Together shifted the focus of the people of Scotland away from the question and on to the SNP vision for Europe. This was designed to ensure that anyone in Scotland who did want to exit the EU would vote NO – and they fell for it – well, 100,000 Scottish UKIP voters did!
The same goes for currency, Trident, the NHS and just about everything else – remember the question – it’s NOT a political question, it’s a question of vision, of hope, of ambition, of belief, of our legacy for our children and our children’s children. The question was miles bigger than a bunch of focus shifting lies dreamt up by Darling, Brown, Murphy, Lamont, Baillie, Davidson, Campbell, Alexander – or to use the collective noun, LIAR POLITICIANS.
The message is simple. The strategy demands focus. And we must stick to it like nothing else matters – and in a real sense, and at that time, NOTHING ELSE REALLY MATTERS. If your child fell in the river, would you stop to give someone directions?? Precisely! so next time we are asked if our country should be independent, please don’t let’s have a discussion about whether it’s the pound or the wee bobbee. That’s a question for the people of iScotland, probably in a referendum. Incidently, I have mentioned referendum on a number of occasions and so may think that is a big commitment. It is not. Every week, millions of people vote on X factor or Strickly and their votes are counted in minutes. We have the technology to do this in a secure and robust manner in hours, not days – and the cost would be pretty much nil.
LESSON 5 – Timing
In a sense, everything in life is about timing. I used to do a lot of marathon running – until I broke my shoelace. I have seen this and experienced it so many times and I know we all have – Next time you watch a race and you see the front runner let number 2 overtake. Watch what happens a short time later when they then go past the new front runner at pace – their spirit is broke – gets them every time.
We had tremendous momentum, almost unstoppable, then NO went past us. If we now gather even more momentum and drive forward with even more determination, the Establishment will crumble.
Timing is everything. That is why the 45 movement and the massive upsurge in membership of the SNP, Greens and others is so important. Just as NO breathed a sight of relief, we were back up on our feet, back with a vengeance, hungrier than ever for our goal.
These elements of resurgence are great, but if we don’t move to the next level quickly we will lose our upwards trajectory.
I am not entirely sure yet how we make this happen. I am presenting one view of what must be done. There will be alternative approaches, alternative initiatives and other momentums being built. One thing is for sure …
WE MUST NOT WAIT AROUND FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN, WE MUST MAKE IT HAPPEN.
WE WERE THE 45, BUT NOW WE ARE MUCH MORE AND GROWING ALL THE TIME … AND IN TIME WE WILL NOT BE A NUMBER, WE WILL BE AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY,
iSCOTLAND