I WAS on the BBC’s Debate Night last week and the conversation turned as one would expect, after 20 opinion polls in a row showing a clear lead for it, to independence. I like Debate Night, the avuncular host Stephen Jardine is a good journalist who keeps the conversation rattling along, doesn’t encourage a rammy and in so doing I think actually gets more out of the guests.
I was struck by the reaction as the show went out though, what I had thought were perfectly standard (even obvious) arguments on independence in Europe were obviously getting through to people who viewed them as new. There
has been a shift in opinion in Scotland (that we know from the polls) but it also means people are listening like many have not listened before to our arguments.
There’s an important lesson there for all of us: what we think is obvious isn’t, and communication is not what is said, it is what is heard. I’ve been working for independence in Europe since 2001 when I went to work for Richard Lochhead in Holyrood while standing for Edinburgh West – I have been working flat out since my election to the European Parliament in 2004.
I got in one of my favourite light-hearted lines, that having been thrown out of my first parliament I’m really working hard to be thrown out my second! Readers of this column will be tooth-numbingly familiar with it, but it was evidently a new line to the audience.
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We forget, we live in bubbles and echo chambers. Our friends often have similar outlooks to us, read the same newspapers, watch the same programmes and listen to the same radio as us. In the SNP family we may disagree on individual bits of policy but the cause is bigger and we stay united till we achieve it.
So I’ve been banging on about independence in Europe for the best part of two decades and it is safe to say that until recently it was a minority sport, even within the SNP. It is only in recent years that the EU aspects of independence have come into sharp focus for everyone. And only now that the reality of Brexit is coming into focus after the last four exhausting years of hypotheticals are people really listening to us.
Seen from UK Tory HQ, the EU referendum was a standalone event with consequences to be managed. Seen from Scotland, it came just 18 months after the independence referendum so it and the consequences of it is seen very much through that prism. Many of the promises that were made to Scotland in 2014 were trashed, fact. Many of the assumptions people had about how the UK more or less worked and more or less served their interests have been shown to be pretty threadbare. A lot of people felt adrift from their political moorings, and many felt uncomfortable about it.
Then came Covid and a lot of the energy in political Scotland has crystallised around what I think will be the fundamental question in the May election and beyond – who takes decisions on your behalf is really important, they need to be accountable to you and share your values.
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Also, the world is a big interconnected place, all countries, no matter how big or small, need to work together. In the same way as the mighty USA has been laid low by poor leadership, so do we need to work together across borders to beat common challenges. And seen from Scotland, the UK’s a mess with an incompetent government, a feral nationalistic backward-looking press and a political discourse as unpleasant as it is shallow. You can’t make culture wars work if the citizenry is informed and engaged – in the UK I fear it is neither.
So we could do better in Scotland, reclaiming the powers independence will bring back, make our own decisions at home and work with the structured international solidarity that is the European Union to common challenges. People are listening in a way many have not before.
So we need to act like it, and we need to be responsible. I’m old school, discipline matters. Everyone in the Yes movement is an ambassador for the Yes movement and we need to focus. The election will not be won on Twitter, full stop. I’m barely on it these days – too many cranks, time-burglars and wacky conspiracy theories and not worth the time (I wish my life was so interesting).
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There’s plenty recent polls that prove that “big on Twitter” is not the same as actually mattering in the eyes of the people of Scotland. Fringe issues, ego-driven psychodramas and late-night tweets about daft conspiracy theories will not win the election, nor independence.
I apologise to any of my journalist pals reading but they also don’t reflect any sort of reality the people out there are experiencing and to give vital column inches to here-today-gone-tomorrow Twitter hoo-hahs does your profession a disservice when there are real issues to focus upon. Climate change, Covid, the economy, education and what our recovery from the pandemic will look like are what the people expect their politicians to be focussing on. And in the SNP, we are. We have a glittering prize right in front of us, let’s not be distracted.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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