Unionists have beaten the yes campaign over the head with the cudgel of the currency, a cypher for the claim that independent Scotland would be a basket case
As the longest campaign in Scottish political history draws to a messy conclusion, what have we learned about Scotland in the past two years? Well, the first and most obvious thing is that many Scots still do not quite understand what independence is or why they would need it.
Scotland is not a colony of England. Its history is very different from that of Ireland, where political opposition to the union grew rapidly in the century after 1801 and led to the civil war and Irish independence. For most of the last 300 years, Scots have been willing partners in the UK, fighting the Empire’s wars and managing its colonial administrations.
Scottish nationalism has never really been about freeing Scotland from foreign oppression because Scots do not feel oppressed. This has not been a national liberation movement. Which may partly explain why the independence campaign got stuck on the rather arcane issue of whether Scotland would keep the pound after a yes vote. More than a hundred countries have won independence since 1945 – many from the old British Empire. In no case has currency been the dominant issue. Movements normally demand ‘freedom!’, not ‘a currency union with a UK central bank!’.
The no campaign saw the potential here to sow doubt. Currency is a pretty difficult issue at the best of times, involving scary things like sovereign debt, flight of funds, optimal currency zones, lender of last resort and currency boards. The best economists have difficulty explaining why or how the eurozone has survived the financial crisis. The overwhelmingly unionist Scottish and UK press used the uncertainty over the currency as a cypher for the argument that Scotland would be an economic basket case after independence.
Scots have been told that their mortgages will rise, their pensions fall and their jobs disappear south of the border if they vote yes. They may not entirely believe Project Fear, as the unionist campaign has been called, but many remain unprepared to take the risk.
This meant that the positive agenda for independence has been largely crowded out. There was very little of the vision thing – how Scotland might create a fairer society if it had control over economic affairs. Nor did unionists appeal to hearts and minds. They beat the yes campaign over the head with the cudgel of the currency, and it never fully recovered its wits.
Even Alex Salmond, one the best political debaters of his generation, was reduced to incoherence in the August television debate by Better Together chair Alistair Darling’s endless demands for a Plan B if the UK forced Scotland out of the sterling zone. The unionist campaign wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty effective at closing down debate.
There have been some positives for the yes campaign. The cultural community in Scotland – artists, playwrights, musicians – rallied to the cause. Creatives are traditionally thought to be immune to ‘narrow nationalism’, but not in this campaign. Writers in particular – including Alistair Gray, Irvine Welsh, William McIlvanney – have sought to keep alive the hope of a better society. The no campaign generated nothing with the wit and imagination of the National Collective which has been organising cultural festivals across Scotland.
Scottish voters have been very engaged in this debate. The public meeting has undergone a genuine revival and turnout in the referendum on September 18 is expected to be high.
And one thing has changed for ever. Even David Cameron now accepts that Scotland could be a viable and even successful independent country. But Scots have yet to be convinced that it is worth the trouble of setting up an independent state to prove it.
Iain Macwhirter is political commentator on the Sunday Herald
This opinion piece was first published in the September edition of Public Finance magazine
