A Psychological Post-mortem of the Scottish Independence Debate. By Dr Liza Morton, Dr Thomas Bacon & Dr Oonagh Williamson Should Scotland be an independent country; YES or NO? This was the question posed to us on the 18th of September 2014. It was, arguably, the most important decision we have had to make in the last 300 years, if not in our entire history as a nation. The level of engagement was something never before seen in Scottish politics and it has left a mark on the Nation’s psyche. As the world watched, we made up our minds.
As we look back, we try to understand how we came to our decision. All decisions are not equal. From the outset we must acknowledge our own bias as three committed YES voters. Fear and the Old Brain: React First, Think Later Our purest fear is generated in the limbic-system of our ancient mid-brain, which developed early in our evolutionary history. Of course, one might be tempted to put this all down to careful consideration and genuine concern. Fear and the New Brain: Rational thought, or not? What about Personality? Murphy’s Law. Robin McAlpine on the changing media and the problems it poses for Scottish Labour’s new man. On the day of the launch of CommonSpace we got a tweet from a journalist claiming that our digital news service looked like it was just a hatchet job on Jim Murphy. That this view was arrived at in one day rather misses the point of news (you can’t investigate things that aren’t happening and this was Jim’s big day…).
That it came from a journalist who spent much of the last year doing hatchet jobs on the independence movement seems to suggest some lack of self-awareness. That he does not seem to spend time using his social media presence to attack other media outlets for real hatchet jobs suggests his issue isn’t with the practice but with the cheek of questioning the establishment view. And yet none of that bothers me at all. There isn’t an answer to that question because the counter is still ticking. So I’m bothered about all of this? This is reflected in his front bench team reshuffle. Love’s Labour’s Lost. By Mike Small As the political fratricide within Labour rumbles on like a sort of Edgar Alan Poe spectacle it’s disconcerting that the person who is on the money about poor Johann is Alex Massie, who wrote earlier: ‘That Johann Lamont did not lead the Scottish Labour party terribly well was less remarkable than the fact she led it at all.’
The party conveyor belt has produced the following: Donald Dewar (7 May 1999 – 11 October 2000), Henry McLeish (27 October 2000 – 8 November 2001), Jack McConnell (22 November 2001 – 15 August 2007), Wendy Alexander (14 September 2007 – 28 June 2008), Iain Gray (13 September 2008 – 17 December 2011), Johann Lamont (January 2012 – October 2014) with a sort of inevitable diminishing return so that each time they become more obscure, less credible, more ridiculous.
Devolution hasn’t really worked for Labour, reduced from the intellectual rigour of Dewar to the rigor mortis of Lamont. But where does it Labour? It’s going to become more and more of a shambles. The Case for Scotland Making a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in May 2015? By Patrick Scott Hogg I heard of a possible unilateral declaration of Scottish Independence from the late Robin Cook MP in 1983 at the Labour Party Conference in Perth City Hall. I asked Robin about Labour’s prospects at the election. We will win Scotland, we agreed but it looked like another Thatcher victory due to English dominance of seat numbers. He then said ‘How can we let the Scottish people suffer another Tory government hell-bent on union destruction and driving down living standards? Robin Cook contemplated UDI but clearly forces within the Scottish party stopped him. Better Together kid themselves by asserting that the referendum vote on 18th Sept expressed the settled will of the Scottish people.
It went right off the Richter Scale of political discourse. The day of reckoning is coming for the Project Fear masters at the ballot box on 7th May 2015. If there is a majority of Pro-Independence MP’s elected on 7th May 2015 there are various scenarios that might play out. Smith and the Subsidy Myth Makers. By Jim and Margaret Cuthbert The following is a letter we have today sent to the Director General of the BBC. The issue is extremely important given the negotiations that are about to start on possible devolution of further powers. Unless the widespread misapprehension south of the Border that Scotland is a subsidy junkie is corrected, Scotland’s strength in the negotiations will be greatly weakened. Dear Sir On 19th September 2014, Robert Peston, BBC Economics Editor, stated the following: “The big question about the Prime Minister’s plan to hand more control over taxes, spending and welfare to the four nations is how far this would end the subsidy of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by England, and especially by London and the South East.”
See here. This is a clear statement that Scotland is subsidised by the rest of the UK. As we now show, Scotland has actually heavily subsidised the rest of the UK over the period since the introduction of the Barnett formula. Yours sincerely, Wipe your eyes. On your feet. By Robin McAlpine The rebellion: Phase Two There will be a time to put in words how I feel now. There will be a time for me to discuss what I think we should have done differently to win. There will most certainly be a time (when the pain subsides) in which I will celebrate who we became in these two years, to memorialise the countless heroes of our failed revolution who changed my life and who changed Scotland. This minute, this grey Friday, I just want to list what we need to do next. (This is a long read for a day like this – read the rest tomorrow).
One: we must precisely design our goal The comforting glory of a binary decision is that you don’t need to think about what you want to achieve. And in case this needs said, I am bound by no gentlemen’s agreement by two wealthy men on when the people of Scotland have a right to decide on their destiny again. Two: we need infrastructure We need to be able to connect the movement, keep it alive and help it to organise and be effective.
And so… The Butterfly Rebellion. Soar Alba By Robin McAlpine The lairds came to warn us villagers to do as we were told. Then the lords came to warn us villagers to do as we were told. But we were in the fields building a rebellion. We have now seen, on shaky mobile phone footage, the moment the British Empire finally ended. It ended with two guys on a rickshaw chasing 100 Labour MPs up Buchannan Street playing the Imperial March from Star Wars and informing bemused shoppers that their Imperial Masters Had Arrived. These imperial ‘masters’ have no guns. The Daily Record looks on, its panties wet with excitement. Down the street a little, a young woman and her pal see Ed, Douglas and Johann radiating away. The inky wing of the British Empire does not know what to do.
In a room behind a locked door, behind a policeman, behind a gate, behind another policeman, a group of millionaires get together. (The No campaign didn’t have a voter registration campaign.) Send up Ed. Get David to emote. Ask the supermarkets to issue threats. Too Little Too Late. By Mike Small Scotland: you are about to be bribed and lied to by some very very desperate people. The idea that the people that have failed by selling you a visionless campaign of cultural self-hatred, reactionary economics and a level of campaign miserabilism never seen before, will now do an about-turn and concoct an enticing federalist future (within days) is comic. But, given full-scale panic mode, this is precisely what we are being told they will try and do.
Writing in the Guardian online, Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey write: “The people of Scotland are to be offered a historic opportunity to devise a federal future for their country before next year’s general election, it emerged on Saturday night, as a shock new poll gave the campaign for independence a narrow lead for the first time. But given the sinking feeling that is now swamping the No campaign, the notion of some post-No ‘big offer’ is being suggested.
Beware Trojan Horses. Like this: Like Loading... Categories: Commentary. Save the Union! By J Simon Jones After the change in the polls the Unionist response has been all that it could be: predictably frenzied Will Hutton, writing in the Observer, says there are now 10 days left to find a settlement to save the Union. He doesn’t realise the Union is already dead, we now have to decide whether to stay in it or go about building our own, functioning country. In a delicious bit of stock-image irony his plea for total federalism, a rejuvenation of Britain’s “liberal enlightenment” values, was at least for a time fronted by a picture of the Capitol building in Washington, DC. After polling announced last night said there was, for the first time, a majority of voters intending to back Yes, the Unionist campaign went into overdrive in predictably self destructive fashion.
The media hasn’t escaped, either. Like this: Like Loading... Categories: Commentary Tags: Scotland, the Observer, Will Hutton. Labour Pains, Labour of Love. Where did it all go wrong? (Photo: Ian Jones) by Irvine Welsh When I think back to how the Scottish independence debate has evolved in terms of my personal journey, I can see it in three distinct phases. The first was best expressed by the bitter and ugly sentiment “it’s all the English’s fault.” I’ve been greatly inspired by the post-devolution generation, and their pragmatic thinking on the issue of independence. I came from a family of trade unionists, and in my youth I was a Labour Party supporter. For most of my young adult life, I moved between Edinburgh and London. I’ve been greatly inspired by the post-devolution generation, and their pragmatic thinking on the issue of independence.
When I was recently back in both Scotland and England, it was instructive to see how generational the independence debate has become and how my own one has split on the issue. I was a benefactor of that consensus. All that has now gone, and the Labour Party will not be bringing it back. Like this: Eckenaccio « By Alistair Davidson And Eck was cast into a furnace of fire: there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. To Britain’s journalists there was no question, Darling bested Salmond. To many Yes activists it felt the same. During a gruelling a two-year campaign, we’ve been called everything from “a virus” to Nazis.
The endless attacks in the press have left us bruised, battered, and angry. At last, we imagined, a chance to see our man, champion of so many a First Minister’s Question Time, finally sock it to them. In the run-in to the first debate, most Yes campaigners seemed to expect Salmond to wipe the floor with Darling. It didn’t happen, of course. The debate itself was a score-draw. The news coverage had the precision of a military Psy Op. Salmond will not be allowed to “win” the next debate either, no matter what he does or says. I cannot emphasise this strongly enough: the Yes campaign will not be allowed any wins in the press at any point in the whole campaign. Like this: Like Loading... You Do Not Exist « By Mike Small You know they are scared now, don’t you? Deeply unsettled. Despite endless proclamations of “I’m a proud Scot but …” the reality of a deep-seated cultural self-hatred is seeping out.
Self-hatred amongst the Love Bombs. As the Commonwealth Games kicks off and the palpable feel-good factor kicks-in, Hamish Macdonell at The Spectator (‘The SNP might not realise it, but in sport, there’s a difference between patriotism and nationalism‘) writes: “For some English viewers, the coverage from Glasgow 2014 might be more than a bit unsettling”. Eh? The problem, apparently is that “Here we are, just eight weeks from the referendum on Scottish independence and our screens are suddenly going to be filled with kilts, Saltires and songs”. Yeah what a bunch of bastards we are with our flag and our kilts. The message from The Spectator is twofold: ANY expression of self-identity is lashed to a visceral anti-Englishness and driven by Alex Salmond. Like this: Like Loading... Categories: Commentary. The Virtual Campaign: or, Dead Frogs and the Athelred Conspiracy « By John S Warren The atmosphere of the referendum has noticeably changed. An increasingly paradoxical quality has emerged, probably because Better Together and the Unionist parties have coalesced closer and closer together in a kind of defensive, closed, belligerent, indistinguishable, blanket Unionism; just as the Coalition Government is drifting uneasily apart under the pressure of the rise of UKIP, David Cameron’s grim, rightward, Eurosceptic drift in his new Cabinet (which is currently being heavily ‘spun’ as if demonstrating his heroic status as the natural heir to the Suffragettes) and the looming 2015 general election.
Incomprehensibly in the middle of this confusion, the Labour Party chooses to move ever closer to the Conservatives on the policy of Austerity and Welfare Cuts. Meanwhile, in the referendum debate this ‘uniform’ (sic) brand of Unionism increasingly presents itself to the Scottish public as angry, bitter and resentful. Like this: Like Loading... Categories: Commentary. Nicodemite No « By Mike Small So who’s having a good war? Every campaign has got to have a hero, right?
So who have we got for the defence of the Union? Amongst the No campaign and their accompanying media there’s a desperate attempt to find some stars. Obviously David Cameron is missing. Now George Galloway, even if the idiot savant of the Spectator were brief fans, does have some problems. Douglas Alexander is dull at a molecular level, and even the equally dull Ian Jack can’t quite resurrect him as a Scots’ Lech Walesa in this dire interview - even when Jack not so much puts words in his mouth as lip-synch’s for him in a desperate hope that he means what Jack hopes he means: “The idea, not that Alexander says this [so, sorry why are you?
Right. “Kirk ministering was the profession of his father’s father as well as his father” cites Jack as they sit being ignored in Morrison’s – as if Alexander’s CoS ancestory absolves him of policy responsibility. So we’re left with Gordon Brown. Really? It goes on. Dinner with No Voters or “What I wanted to say before the Pudding hit the fan” « This from Peter Arnott works as a part response to this conflict-averse piece by Madeleine Bunting (check the weird ethnic civic framing). One thing that almost all of my friends who tell me they intend to vote No in September have in common is that they wish that this referendum campaign had never happened. They don’t see the need for it. They think it is needlessly sowing doubt, division and uncertainty at a time when nobody really wanted the debate to happen.
They wish the whole damn thing would go away and be forgotten. I have a certain amount of sympathy with that. I am sure Alex Salmond does too. After all, he didn’t expect the Labour Party in Great Britain and in Scotland to collapse quite so comprehensively as they did in 2010 and 2011, and thus make possible the election of a majority SNP administration at Holyrood that was bound – trapped even – by history and manifesto commitments into calling a referendum that was not at the time of their choosing. Sorry. You voted for it. Those Really Annoying Adverts Torn Apart « A Cup Of Hot Chocolate « Futurama « Don’t Take Your Foot off the Gas « The Yes Campaign is Out of Control « Another Britain « Most of the Act of Union would survive Scottish “independence” « Westminster Debating « Black Swans « Keeping Up with the Jones « From the Periphery « Better Togethers Surrealist Turn « Talks from Yes Leith « On Becoming Foreign «
The Missing « On Parade « TV Nation | Bella Caledonia. Why Willie? « Nigel Farage Woos Scotland. We Are Not Men We Are Devo | From the Province of the Cat 16 – When Up is Down then Down must be Up | Bella Caledonia. The 2% Gang | Bella Caledonia. Irvine Welsh on ‘Scottish Independence and British Unity’ | Blue Labour, White Flags & Red Lines | Scotch Myths: Independence is a Panacea | It’s Time (for Scotland to Grow Up) | Clarifying EU Membership: HC 643 The foreign policy implications of and for a separate Scotland (Source: UK Government) |
Andy Murray, 11th September and Scotland’s feelgood factor | State of InterIndependence: A Vision for Scottish Self-Determination « Oh Danny Boy (le) « How We Won « The Future’s Bright « Bambi Saves the Union « JACK**** « Let Them Vote « Starkey « Boris Johnson: Midwife of Scottish Independence? « Anti-Englishness and the SNP « Welcome to Skintland « The Bain Principle « Jim Sillars: Dancing Around Devolution « Labour for Independence « For the Record |