Ruth Wishart: Propaganda war begins as Union’s dirty tricks unit targets voters

Modern life is lived in headlines and soundbites. And, as Mr Trump proved only too well, the biggest lie can become the accepted wisdom if merely repeated often enough. Which brings me to the paper drawn up by two LSE students, already seized upon by legendary truth tellers like Michael Gove – of whom more later – to “prove” an independent Scotland would be, yup you guessed, too wee and poor to make it.

As per the 2014 project fear playbook, the paper’s political “interpreters” chose to pluck a sum from the text by which they claimed, post indy, all Scots would be the poorer. As it happens the authors themselves don’t claim this at any point, as their apocalyptic predictions are a) concerned only with trade, b) speculating on matters a generation hence, and c) guesstimating growth levels, not personal income.

READ MORE: Angus Robertson: Tories like Michael Gove play politics with coronavirus

As contemporary economists of rather more standing and reputation have pointed out, you’d need to be gey foolish to guess three months ahead right now, let alone 30 years. Just ask the chancellor, whose budgetary predictions have had to be changed oftener than his undergarments. And I’m assuming him to be a man of impeccable personal hygiene.

It’s instructive to learn from my colleague George Kerevan that the LSE unit housing these precocious students is chaired by Sir Nick Macpherson, the treasury mandarin who was wheeled out in 2014 – against all civil service custom and practice – to aid the Tory camp. And that thanks are duly given in the paper to Professor Jim Gallagher, Better Together’s go to Dr No.

The paper has already been deconstructed and serially rubbished by folk like economist Richard Murphy and Bella Caledonia’s John Warren, both of whom remind us, inter alia, that the authors themselves, bereft of the necessary data to make a coherent case, urge readers to treat their predictions with caution. You betcha.

One of the more arcane bits of data they did come up with on which to base their findings, was the Ireland UK trade patterns from 1922. A rather more current snapshot would have told them that while 90% of Ireland’s trade in 1940 was with the UK, by 2018 that had shrunk to 11%. The paper also assumes that post independence, Scotland will sit drumming its figures and hoping, Micawber fashion, that something will turn up.

As Lesley Riddoch’s documentary on post-independence Estonia points out, what that tiny country did was look around for an emerging market to back and fight its way to supremacy in the digital marketplace. Every newly independent country ploughs its own furrow, and our bet may go on renewables or bio technology. What we won’t be doing is hanging about watching re-runs of WW2 movies.

And now to Michael Gove, the Tory Party’s favourite limbo dancer, since few people are prepared to go lower. Folks looking for any trace of his Scottish origins will search in vain, unless they count the porkies he told about his adopted father’s fish business.

Ever since his Oxford university days, where he campaigned for one Boris Johnson to become President of the Student Union, Gove has lost no opportunity to belittle the country of his birth. An early video of a stand up routine he did for Tory conference goers, has him deploying every negative cliché in the book about Scots supposedly on the make or desperate for handouts or both.

Some time ago the blessed Eddie Mair, standing in for Andrew Marr one Sunday, was interviewing Johnson about the latter’s shoddy record in terms of his personal behaviour and his inability to form any meaningful relationship with the truth. “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” he concluded. It would be a public service if Mair could utilise the same forensic skills on Gove.

For he too, can be shown to be a man of scant moral probity when an opportunity for self advancement arises. As his erstwhile boss, and former close family friend David Cameron recounts in his autobiography, Gove’s primary quality is disloyalty.

Until a late stage Cameron was given to understand that Gove would be backing Remain. Until he wasn’t. Until a late stage he was promised that, though switching to Leave, he would be playing no prominent role in that campaign. Until he became co-leader of it.

Then there was his backing of Boris to be party leader. Until the day Johnson was due to launch his bid. Whereupon Gove publicly stabbed him in the front, declaring him to be devoid of the necessary qualities to be PM (He’s just occasionally on the money!) And then our Michael, who had himself previously said he would never stand as he too was lacking in the right stuff, promptly announced his own candidature.

This is the kind of behaviour which gives sleekit a bad name.

He went on to stand not once, but twice for the top job, coming third out of three in both cases. It takes a particular kind of talent to get beaten by Andrea Leadsom. The eventual winner of that particular gig was Theresa May, and one of life’s more enduring mysteries is why she recalled both Johnson and Gove to cabinet positions after they had already betrayed her. That went well!

These then are the track records of the men who will bend every sinew, and twist every “fact” to prevent an independence referendum if they can, or sabotage the Yes campaign if they can’t. It is long past time to take this threat seriously, because naval gazing doesn’t win wars.

Gove, the man now backtracking on his breezy prognoses that any business hobbled or bankrupted by Brexit is merely experiencing “teething problems”, is also the chap charged with orchestrating the activities of the unit whose raison d’etre is to damage devolution whilst promoting the joys of the Union.

THE personnel in this man’s army has been subject to a certain amount of redeployment already. Out, last week, went the only chap who was actually a Scot, and, given the nod as supreme commander, is Oliver Lewis, late of the Vote Leave mafia.

READ MORE: Michael Gove managed to shoot himself in the foot over indyref2 in one tweet

Vote Leave became a byword for using digital advertising to persuade the public that black was white. Among their more notorious lies was that leaving the EU would mean £350 million a week for the NHS, and that Turkey’s 76 million citizens would be given free visas to travel throughout the EU. Both flat out porkies.

In Peter Geoghegan’s excellent “Democracy for Sale”, he quotes Dominic Cummings as saying: “If Boris, Gove and Gisela Stuart had not supported us and picked up the baseball bat marked Turkey/NHS/£350m with five weeks to go then 650,000 votes might have been lost.”

Cummings, lest we forget, long before his late developing optical delusions, was first hired by the Tory Education Secretary, then a certain Michael Gove.

This pair have history and none of it is pretty.

So let us wise up folks. I think we all know that doing a ferrets in a sack impersonation is a self indulgent distraction from a war which is no longer phoney. Outside of all other considerations, it provides cheap ammunition to those whose full time role in life is to ensure that Scotland stays in the Union. Whatever it takes. Whatever dodgy propositions are for sale.

And these salesmen are not short of experience in duplicitous marketing.