Just as I started this post I watched the YES Campaign meeting in North Ayrshire. It was a very good debate. The speakers were very good and the questions were also very relevant. Patrick Harvie was one of the speakers so you are always assured of some good old common sense especially if you are even a little bit of an environmentalist.
Almost from nowhere one member of the audience made a statement. He was not sure about the split in the room between Yes/No and Undecided. However, his concern was that the quality of the responses was not sufficient to sway an undecided voter.
I smirked to myself and got on with the blog in the knowledge that at least one other person shared my views.
There is a world of difference between making statements to your own people, preaching to the converted if you will, and offering a convincing argument that can persuade an undecided voter or compel a No voter to examine their decision.
The Yes campaign is excellent at the former and frankly very poor at the latter. From my experience, Yes voters offer SNP policy responses to questions from Undecided or No voters.
There is a very good reason for that. The referendum has, very blatantly, been dragged into the political arena by the Edinburgh Agreement. This precipitated the White Paper from the SNP. I am sure that was a very clever, but underhand tactic from Cameron, or rather his strategy advisors.
Once the White Paper, a political document, was out there the opposition i.e. Better Together and Westminster could hold it up to criticism. Politics, by its very nature causes division. Have you every heard of a political statement where everyone says ‘Good idea, we all agree with that?’. Thought not!
Where there is division there is debate. Where there is debate there is doubt. Where there is doubt there is fear. Where there is fear there is resistance to change. That’s why Better Together keep pulling the referendum question back into the political arena.
The referendum question is not about politics. For a start it is ‘long termism’ if there is such a word. The future being decided at the referendum is long term. Politics is almost always ‘short termism’. Rab Butler, the Conservative deputy PM famously said, ‘a week is a long time in politics’.
Once the ‘beast’ of politics is out there, you have to feed it. However, there will always be this conflict between ‘long termism’ and ‘short termism’.
What the Yes Campaign must do is to keep dragging the debate back into the long term.
However, the main obstacle is our ability to answer the questions well. Here is just one example from the last Yes Campaign meeting I attended in Cardross.
The speakers were very good, especially Business for Scotland, and presented their Yes perspective very well. I opened the question and answer session with a question on why we would wish to fight for independence from Westminster then hand that over to the EU.
The answer I received was around the process of remaining in, the unlikelihood of Scotland having to leave etc. Everything except an answer to this key question that is very much in the public eye. I did not get the impression that the speakers has thought this through fully and were simply offering the SNP perspective. If I was to answer the question I would say that there is every likelihood that Scotland will simply remain in the EU as a democratic self Governing nation. However, since this question has never been put to the people of Scotland it is very likely that the new Government will either have included this in their election manifesto pledge or put it to the people in an In/Out referendum.
The thing that disappointed me most happened when a young girl in the audience asked about the transitional period. I got the impression that she was Yes or almost Yes but she was concerned about how an independent Scotland could afford to pay their bills and provide all the current services until they had evolved to become a more prosperous nation.
I have to say, this is probably the best question I have heard to date. The answer from the platform simply referred her back to their opening presentations. I saw a look of disappointment on her face. If that was me I would have begun to wonder if they actually knew or whether the were ‘winging it’.
I put my hand up to try to help answer the question, but unfortunately, the MC had heard enough from me- he probably had me branded as a trouble maker for opening the debate on the EU that introduced a disenchanted member of the audience. Incidently, this sceptic was very unfairly ‘shouted down’ in a way that made me feel ashamed.
If I had an opportunity to speak I would have offered this young girl my explanation. We live in a world where people, companies and countries spend on credit. For example, Westminster ‘keeps the lights on’ despite being in debt well north of £1.5 Trillion. That’s because, according to the 3 main Ratings Agencies the UK is very credit worthy. We have heard many conflicting stories, mainly from Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. This has varied between marking us down to AA+ all the way up to AAA (independent of oil). All this means is that Scotland is highly credit worthy. If you are credit worthy the world’s lenders will be lining up to lend to you, if you need it, because THAT’S THEIR BUSINESS.
Scotland is very rich in oil, gas, renewable energy, financial services, fish, whisky, tourism, customer services etc. and we sit on a bed of coal. Most especially we have highly skilled and innovative people.
For those reasons, we will not have any difficulties finding the financial wherewithal to keep everything running just nicely.
We may even be able to put a little aside to assist our cousins south of the border who may now be in a little difficulty after having their snouts pulled out of the ‘trough of plenty’.
Somehow or other I feel that that young girl’s great question would have been better answered in such a manner rather than a glib ‘think we’ve already answered that question’
If my answer seemed a bit Standard, their answer certainly seemed a bit Poor.
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