The poverty of the Better Together campaign

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/30/better-together-scottish-independence-paper

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If Scotland opts to become an independent nation next September, then the week beginning 24 November 2013 may yet come to be regarded as that in which the tide began to turn. Two days prior to the long-awaited publication of the SNP's white paper on independence, the Sunday Times, flagship of Unionism in Scotland, announced the results of its latest opinion poll on the issue. The paper revealed that only nine percentage points now separated a Yes and a No Vote, the first single-digit gap since the campaign began.

The fabled white paper itself was a reasonable and fact-based dissertation of what an independent Scotland might look like. A motif was etched on each of its 670 pages and that will also be sewn into the fabric of the new independent nation: social justice, equality and fairness. Once upon a time the real Labour party and not this wretched facsimile that pretends it is would have been proud to call this its own. Nor was this the Marxist treatise for which many on the right were waiting, muskets cocked. Indeed, personally, I would have liked to have seen a deeper shade of red throughout, such as more detailed provisions for stemming the instinctive greed of the banks and smashing the avarice of the energy cartel. And what about plans to begin returning Scotland's great landed estates to common ownership, whence they were stolen in the first place?

But I'm sure we can have a serious look at these again. There is an opportunity for capital and investment to grow in this country underpinned by attractive business rates, well-educated citizenry, a lifetime of oil revenues and our great coastal assets of wind and waves. It is the confident declaration of a country that knows where it came from and knows where it's going.

Yet last week will not come to be defined by this document but by the reaction that accompanied it. For this was the first time that all the spiritual emptiness and intellectual paucity of the Better Together campaign was laid bare for the entire nation to see. Admittedly, the Better Together campaign has been dismal from the outset, characterised by claims that are simply unhinged. Indeed, just the previous week, Better Together advanced the theory that the BBC would disappear from television screens in an independent Scotland and thus Alex Salmond would have succeeded where the Daleks had failed by killing off Doctor Who. Who is running this campaign – Worzel Gummidge?

On Tuesday we were forced to witness the inelegant and slightly shabby travelling circus of Alistair Darling rushing from studio to studio desperately trying to joust with the bolder assertions of the white paper. By the end of the day he looked slightly bedraggled and there was evidence of tumbleweed in that otherwise well-maintained silver coiffure. For surely there must be a limit to how much a so-called patriot can denigrate the abilities of the country he purports to love?

Disappointingly predictably, Mr Darling chose to attack the SNP government's intention to deploy sterling as the national currency of an independent Scotland. As a former UK chancellor, Mr Darling knows better than just about everyone else why it suits the rest of the UK for Scotland to keep sterling. Scotland is the UK's second biggest export market and if it wasn't in sterling and any of these exports were disrupted, jobs in England would be destroyed. Like every chancellor since 1979, Mr Darling also knows that North Sea oil exports provide significant heft to the UK's balance of trade. To lose oil from the sterling area balance of trade would be a big blow to the value of sterling in the money markets. Presumably this is why not three days had elapsed since publication of the white paper before Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, signalled his intention to enter "basic discussions" with the Scottish government on a sterling currency union.

On Wednesday, on STV's flagship current affairs programme, Scotland Tonight, we were also treated to the delights of a live autopsy. This was performed by Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's deputy first minister, on the carcass of Alistair Carmichael, recently appointed Scottish secretary. In doing so, Ms Sturgeon also eviscerated the entire Better Together campaign by exposing and then bludgeoning the area where it is weakest: its abject inability to produce anything that speaks of aspiration or hope or improvement if Scotland were to remain in the union.

In particular, Mr Carmichael seemed unable to describe what would happen to Scotland if a No vote is delivered. For there has been no more than vague talk of extra devolved powers and nothing about the Barnett Formula, despite the fact that, rather menacingly, a groundswell is beginning to develop among Westminster MPs that favours scrapping it.

The following day at Holyrood, Johann Lamont, Labour's Scottish leader and an increasingly impressive performer in the chamber, also demonstrated the weakness of Better Together when she chose to ridicule nationalist optimism about negotiating membership of the EU from within. Triumphantly, she said muchas gracias to the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, who that very day had suggested that an independent Scotland would have to apply to become a member of the EU from the outside. This, averred Ms Lamont, blew a hole in the SNP's EU ambitions when she knows it did no such thing. Signor Rajoy has a problem inside his borders over the movement for Catalan independence. A Scottish Yes vote would complicate his life. It would be unthinkable for Spain to veto an application from a western sovereign state with a clean bill of economic health and a 1,000-year history of trade with Europe.

There are many reasons why Better Together would never dare to produce its own white paper entitled "Britain's Future". For how could any Scottish Labour supporter subscribe to a document that would talk of penalising the poor; cutting the taxes of the rich; allowing our defence and intelligence policies to resemble those of Texas and re-introducing a light touch for bankers? Not to mention leaving Europe and telling immigrants to go home.

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