[Robin McAlpine Blog] The time for fairytales in Scottish independence movement is over

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The time for fairytales in Scottish independence movement is over

First published by The National

One day the independence movement needs to face an uncomfortable question – did we really believe the politicians when they told us that they had "a brilliant secret plan but we can’t tell you about it", three times in a row – or are we simply believing what we want to be true even when we know it isn’t?

It’s a pretty fundamental question right now, and it is only one question about the range of delusions we’ve demonstrated. Did you really believe we could hold a non-Section 30 Order referendum despite the Scotland Act making clear it was a reserved issue?

Did you really believe the multiple times we were told that one more election victory would result in opposition to a referendum melting away ‘like snow off a dyke’? Do you genuinely think that any subject that gets just over 50 per cent in an opinion poll must be legislated for immediately? You know that’s not how parliamentary democracy works, right?

Or, for me, above all, are you really going to keep referencing the 23 counties that have left the UK to become independent nation states since the Second World War but repeatedly ignore the fact that in every case there was overwhelming public support for independence first?

I have not enjoyed my Cassandra role in the independence movement one little bit, but when others were telling me things that were so obviously nonsensical, how was I meant to say nothing? People are now accepting that the cause of independence is ‘stuck’, but it has quite clearly been stuck for ten years.

We have created a world of delusion based on the promise that there is a shortcut to independence if only we can find the right smart-arse cheat code. It’s as if we saw a web ad saying ‘political strategists HATE this secret technique for winning all the time’ and we sent them our credit card details.

Far too many of us have been content to be hushed to sleep with comfortable fairytales which do not stand up to scrutiny in the light of day. So instead let me introduce you to my nightmare. In it the Scottish Government continues to resemble a leaf in a stream, buffeted about by the currents without any direction of its own.

Meanwhile the independence movement undertakes another four-year hunt for the Holy Get-Out Clause, checking behind the sofa and under the bed for magic beans. Of course, there will be no shortage of grifters telling you they have the magic beans – at a price.

You don’t get to claim a mandate over a power you do not have on a minority of votes cast

We turn inwards on ourselves more and more, saying things like ‘the Murrell Scandal hasn’t cut through with the public’ (you’re kidding, right?) or or blaming all our failures on ‘the unionist media’. Then, encased in our endless excuses, we realise the public has walked away from us.

And then we wake up, it’s 2031, the SNP has lost the election and realistically it’ll be nearly 2040 before we can even begin to think about another tilt at independence.

I certainly haven’t made myself popular with many of you by dissenting from the fantasy vision we were sold over the last ten years but I console myself with having been right. This nightmare scenario is the most likely outcome from the debate we’re having right now, and I really don’t want to be right again.

So can I remind you how things actually work in a democracy. You get elected to a policy-making body which has defined powers and if you have enough votes, you get to decide which of those powers you use. The only thing which can compel you to do something you don’t want to do is internal political pressure (dissent in your ranks) or external public or civic pressure.

External political pressure is not part of this picture. That another party doesn’t like what you are doing or not doing is irrelevant in every possible sense. Unless that party is channeling public sentiment in a way that you feel will damage you, you ignore them. That is how democracy works.

The Scottish Parliament does not have the power to hold a constitutional referendum. The pro-independence parties scored only 41 per cent of the vote at this year’s election. You don’t get to claim a mandate over a power you do not have on a minority of votes cast.

Pictures of windmills with your favourite slogan on them aren’t going to change anyone’s mind

Since then I’ve been watching with interest and our debate seems to be sticking to the same old model: (1) don’t answer the voters’ questions, just mumble something and tell them we’ll explain later (2) look for a shortcut that forces a vote (3) be independent.

This is just a way of saying ‘skip building consent and look for a workaround’, but we are not in control of the power that would be needed to skip the consent-building stage. This means that unless we build consent first, there will be no independence.

There is a different model which I’ve been arguing for for a decade now. It goes (1) treat voters with respect, listen to what they tell us could change their minds and do the work to prepare that thing, (2) communicate clearly and creatively with them to answer their questions and give them a reason to support independence (3) have a strategy for how to convert public pressure into political action once we get enough support.

And before you tell me that your version of model one actually achieves the same as my model two, can I just stop you. No, you going off and scheming up schemes in your head is not the same as listening to the views of the public. No, you knocking together slogans and leaflets and writing letters is not the same as addressing the issues people want addressed.

Doing the work does not mean doing what you want to do anyway, it means doing what your target audience is asking you to do. Communicating does not mean barking your same list of personal preferences at the public. Pictures of windmills with your favourite slogan on them aren’t going to change anyone’s mind.

There is ten per cent of the Scottish public which is not yet certain about independence but is very persuadable. Many of them do not vote in elections and absolutely none of them have ever voter SNP. They keep saying that they can’t support independence if they think we don’t know what we’re doing.

They want to see coherent plans (how are we going to do what we say we’ll do without screwing it up like a ferry-building contract or a Deposit Return Scheme?) and they want to be given a meaningful reason to change position (what problem in their life does independence solve?).

Get them and we’re at 60 per cent. Get 60 per cent and we have more paths to independence than we need. Fail and there are no paths at all. It is that simple.

So it is up to us now. We have three options – continue the fruitless conversations about de facto referendums and the like for another five years, win more public support and use that soft power cleverly or wait for another secret plan. Two of these are fairytales. Surely you can see that by now?

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