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| However Scotland votes, UK politics has changed permanently | However Scotland votes, UK politics has changed permanently |
| (8 months later) | |
| This has been the campaign of a lifetime. In these last, tumbling days Scotland has surely understood that the politics of the country has been changed irrevocably. Behind the headlines on Friday, whatever they are, will lie the truth that the dynamism of this argument transcends the fact of the result itself, whichever way it falls. For once, it's true: politics will not be the same again. | |
| We've all seen it in the streets. Youngsters caught up in the campaign on both sides who have grown up in a few weeks, voters who have ignored politics for years but who have rushed to register (118,000 of them in the last month alone) and, just as significantly, established parties who have found themselves startled, and sometimes shocked, by an outpouring of passion in these last days that seemed to them to hark back to the folklore of a different time when the voters maybe cared more, and gave more to the cause. | We've all seen it in the streets. Youngsters caught up in the campaign on both sides who have grown up in a few weeks, voters who have ignored politics for years but who have rushed to register (118,000 of them in the last month alone) and, just as significantly, established parties who have found themselves startled, and sometimes shocked, by an outpouring of passion in these last days that seemed to them to hark back to the folklore of a different time when the voters maybe cared more, and gave more to the cause. |
| Such half-memories involve illusions, but this campaign climax has produced an atmosphere that is not only heady, sometimes dizzying, but clarifying too. Leave aside the drowning of sorrows that will occupy the troops of one side or the other over the weekend, Scotland is going to be different whether it starts on the winding road to independence or prepares for a different kind of union. | |
| Because that is the first consequence of this campaign. Whatever agreement is reached by the main Westminster parties on the precise new powers for Holyrood in the event of a no vote, the nature of the north-south relationship has to be different. For many voters "the union" has been an awkward motto on the banner to cluster beneath on the no side, because it's never been a phrase that they've used or found comfortable, and the most obvious result of the arguments through these long months that it no longer means what perhaps it once did. | Because that is the first consequence of this campaign. Whatever agreement is reached by the main Westminster parties on the precise new powers for Holyrood in the event of a no vote, the nature of the north-south relationship has to be different. For many voters "the union" has been an awkward motto on the banner to cluster beneath on the no side, because it's never been a phrase that they've used or found comfortable, and the most obvious result of the arguments through these long months that it no longer means what perhaps it once did. |
| The discomfort of the Westminster leaders on their forays north has been palpable, and they've found it difficult to respond to the barbs of Alex Salmond and his party about a distant establishment that has lost touch with its northern outpost. The reason is that they've finally begun to understand the force of the nationalists' rise: a particular manifestation of the wider loss of faith in established leadership that goes far beyond the Scottish question. No one on high has the power to stem that tide. | The discomfort of the Westminster leaders on their forays north has been palpable, and they've found it difficult to respond to the barbs of Alex Salmond and his party about a distant establishment that has lost touch with its northern outpost. The reason is that they've finally begun to understand the force of the nationalists' rise: a particular manifestation of the wider loss of faith in established leadership that goes far beyond the Scottish question. No one on high has the power to stem that tide. |
| As a result, they've discovered that there is little appeal among voters for recovering a lost past in which the union delivered stability and prosperity. They no longer believe it. But neither do they believe overwhelmingly that there is nothing to be gained from partnership. | As a result, they've discovered that there is little appeal among voters for recovering a lost past in which the union delivered stability and prosperity. They no longer believe it. But neither do they believe overwhelmingly that there is nothing to be gained from partnership. |
| Outside the two camps where certainty still provides comfort – heart-and-soul nationalists who feel the wrongs of history weighing them down, and that part of the electorate which historically found devolution itself uncomfortable and dangerous – there has emerged a broad swath of the electorate, almost certainly a majority, who are quite close in their hopes for Scotland, although some of them will vote yes and some no in search of it. | Outside the two camps where certainty still provides comfort – heart-and-soul nationalists who feel the wrongs of history weighing them down, and that part of the electorate which historically found devolution itself uncomfortable and dangerous – there has emerged a broad swath of the electorate, almost certainly a majority, who are quite close in their hopes for Scotland, although some of them will vote yes and some no in search of it. |
| They want a powerful parliament, a society that they see as being shaped by distinctively Scottish principles, and a feeling for history and culture that they want to keep intact. Some of them think that objective would be threatened by independence, because they see it as divisive, and others think that Westminster can't be trusted to deliver it without the shock of a yes. But they want much the same thing. | They want a powerful parliament, a society that they see as being shaped by distinctively Scottish principles, and a feeling for history and culture that they want to keep intact. Some of them think that objective would be threatened by independence, because they see it as divisive, and others think that Westminster can't be trusted to deliver it without the shock of a yes. But they want much the same thing. |
| It is not a union sustained by gratitude, but characterised by dynamism, a feeling for change that would have to involve everyone outside Scotland too. A vague thought now, but one that won't be wafted away by a no vote. If Westminster hasn't got that message from the campaign, it hasn't been listening. | |
| It's been striking at public forums and in countless conversations over the months to find people who are divided in the campaign but who talk about Scotland 10 years from now in very similar terms – and, even more strikingly, who believe that it might have come about whatever the result . | It's been striking at public forums and in countless conversations over the months to find people who are divided in the campaign but who talk about Scotland 10 years from now in very similar terms – and, even more strikingly, who believe that it might have come about whatever the result . |
| This is uncomfortable for the political parties, because it suggests that there is indeed a movement that has come into being as a result of this referendum which is not easily managed, or manipulated. You'll find plenty of people in Scotland who believe that Salmond's campaign – which he was thrown into rather earlier than he might have wished, as a consequence of his 2011 election victory – has produced a movement that goes far beyond the confines of the SNP and will be difficult for that party itself to control. | This is uncomfortable for the political parties, because it suggests that there is indeed a movement that has come into being as a result of this referendum which is not easily managed, or manipulated. You'll find plenty of people in Scotland who believe that Salmond's campaign – which he was thrown into rather earlier than he might have wished, as a consequence of his 2011 election victory – has produced a movement that goes far beyond the confines of the SNP and will be difficult for that party itself to control. |
| For Labour – still holding 41 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster – there is an understanding that its long-vanished supremacy in the streets (a myth that has been on life-support for a while now) will not easily be recovered, let alone sustained. Behind the facade, these two parties are battling for the future as the natural government of Scotland, and the vote on Thursday will not be the end of it. | For Labour – still holding 41 of the 59 Scottish seats at Westminster – there is an understanding that its long-vanished supremacy in the streets (a myth that has been on life-support for a while now) will not easily be recovered, let alone sustained. Behind the facade, these two parties are battling for the future as the natural government of Scotland, and the vote on Thursday will not be the end of it. |
| If there's a no vote, Labour will regard it as half-time in a contest that won't end until the Scottish election in 2016. If it's yes, all bets are off and the parties will have to find the rhetoric and the intellectual bite for a set of challenges that no one is yet in a position to imagine in anything other than hazy outline. They simply don't know. | If there's a no vote, Labour will regard it as half-time in a contest that won't end until the Scottish election in 2016. If it's yes, all bets are off and the parties will have to find the rhetoric and the intellectual bite for a set of challenges that no one is yet in a position to imagine in anything other than hazy outline. They simply don't know. |
| In these last fevered hours, such thoughts are in the background. But the campaign has recast the landscape. It's rather dark, but light will soon break and the contours will start to become clear. No one is going to find it a particularly comfortable place, but there is no way back. | In these last fevered hours, such thoughts are in the background. But the campaign has recast the landscape. It's rather dark, but light will soon break and the contours will start to become clear. No one is going to find it a particularly comfortable place, but there is no way back. |
| For that reason, the explosions of irritation from some backbenchers about Scottish representation at Westminster, the place about Scots ministers in a future government, the concept of "an English parliament" aren't at all beside the point, as some Scots politicians enjoy saying. | For that reason, the explosions of irritation from some backbenchers about Scottish representation at Westminster, the place about Scots ministers in a future government, the concept of "an English parliament" aren't at all beside the point, as some Scots politicians enjoy saying. |
| They're fundamental to the argument. Without a constitutional conversation that covers the whole UK, Scotland's great debate will have been wasted. A yes vote would force the pace; but no should, too. | They're fundamental to the argument. Without a constitutional conversation that covers the whole UK, Scotland's great debate will have been wasted. A yes vote would force the pace; but no should, too. |
| Sometimes the contest has been characterised as a collision between head and heart, and too often on the sloppy assumption that "heart" equals a desire for independence and the "head" is a more rational assessment of the economic future. That's not it at all. The problem is that sorting out the head and heart is much more complicated. | |
| Many people feel the cross-border ties and the pull of a shared history as strongly as others crave a different kind of national sovereignty, and there are many yes voters who have taken up their position after cold, sobering thought and not a rush of blood to the head. | Many people feel the cross-border ties and the pull of a shared history as strongly as others crave a different kind of national sovereignty, and there are many yes voters who have taken up their position after cold, sobering thought and not a rush of blood to the head. |
| They are competing instincts that always struggle – the feeling of being drawn by a commitment that lies somewhere deep inside and the knowledge that a momentous decision in the referendum has to be taken rationally. Many voters too will have wrestled their way through the debate, sometimes drawn one way and sometimes the other. In other words, they have swithered. | |
| But those doubts, and that difficulty, hasn't drained this campaign of its quality. Instead, the conversation has been enlivened. I think of the young campaigners in great numbers, of one grandfather I met who's been lifted by this campaign although he has only bothered to vote once in his whole life, of people in village halls who have seen communities come alive in the fervour. | But those doubts, and that difficulty, hasn't drained this campaign of its quality. Instead, the conversation has been enlivened. I think of the young campaigners in great numbers, of one grandfather I met who's been lifted by this campaign although he has only bothered to vote once in his whole life, of people in village halls who have seen communities come alive in the fervour. |
| Forget some of the daft name-calling and some of the dodgy leaflets and claims on both sides; there has been a real argument and its effects will last. | Forget some of the daft name-calling and some of the dodgy leaflets and claims on both sides; there has been a real argument and its effects will last. |
| At moments of difficulty, Scots enjoy the luxury of pondering the contradictions in their feelings and history, sometimes persuading themselves that the pain is unique. They'll think of Hugh MacDiarmid, who wrote that the rose of all the world was not for him, "only the little white rose of Scotland, that smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart". And perhaps they sink happily into a familiar maudlin state. | At moments of difficulty, Scots enjoy the luxury of pondering the contradictions in their feelings and history, sometimes persuading themselves that the pain is unique. They'll think of Hugh MacDiarmid, who wrote that the rose of all the world was not for him, "only the little white rose of Scotland, that smells sharp and sweet – and breaks the heart". And perhaps they sink happily into a familiar maudlin state. |
| But this time, maybe not. After the emotional reckoning on Friday, whichever way Scots have decided to turn, we may find our politics is more robust. More emotional, perhaps in the short term, but more thoughtful too. | But this time, maybe not. After the emotional reckoning on Friday, whichever way Scots have decided to turn, we may find our politics is more robust. More emotional, perhaps in the short term, but more thoughtful too. |
| If Scots benefit from such an outcome, so will everyone else in the UK. | If Scots benefit from such an outcome, so will everyone else in the UK. |