[Robin McAlpine Blog] When strategy isn’t strategy at all

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When strategy isn't strategy at all

Well I’ll tell you what, you can’t accuse John Swinney of failing to play the long game. That’s him 30 years in Scottish politics and all this time, the whole time, he had a secret plan for independence that he was holding back for just the perfect moment. You know, like when you’re at a recent historic low in the polls and need to feed the troops some pish or other.

Last week in a comment to The National I said that I could write an essay on why John Swinney’s indy plan can’t and won’t work. To do so feels futile. I mean, in the most literal sense possible, I don’t think there is anyone in Scottish politics who is taking it seriously. Not a soul thinks this is actually going to happen.

But just because I want doggedly to try and inject some intellectual rigour into debate in Scotland where I can, let me have a brief go at explaining why this is a wrong-headed waste of everyone’s time.

To begin, let me try to outline what the key elements of the Swinney strategy are – I don’t mean what was in his motion, I mean how the moving parts are supposed to work. There are currently four basic component parts of the narrative, and problem one is that they aren’t consistent with each other.

First, there is boosterism. The vast bulk of the independence papers publish by government are surface level slogans about how brilliant Scotland is and how well lots of other countries are doing. Second, there is civic emergency. Reform is coming – we need to get out as fast as we can.

Then there is a third element which is transactional – you’ll all be £10k better of it Scotland becomes independent. And then there is a question of democratic principle, or Scotland’s right to decide.

When constructing a narrative the one thing about all you’re looking for is logical consistency. I don’t mean that in a philosophy department kind of way, I mean that people operate on some kind of basis of consistent logic and they struggle with ideas that don’t follow that logic. ‘I’m so short I keep banging my head on the door frame’ screams out inconsistency to us and causes us to doubt at least some part of the statement.

And these all point in different directions. One wants you to be scared, one wants you to stare into fluffy white clouds in a clear blue sky, one wants your civic rationality to kick in, one is a pure, venal bribe. Even if each of these worked in their own right, they clash.

Four weak arguments are actually weaker than one weak argument because it tells the listener you know your argument is weak

Think of it like this: "I’ve got a lovely luxury lifeboat. You should try it some time. Its got a minibar and a TV and velvet and a karaoke function for long trips. Which is just as well because the ship has just hit an iceberg and it’s sinking and we’re all going to die.

"But if that doesn’t convince you, let’s contemplate the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea which mandates the need for lifeboats and let’s reflect on the long and involved process of writing those guidelines. Still not sure? I’ll give you a tenner if you get in the boat."

You see how none of that tracks. It’s all pointing in a different direction. It’s like someone has come up with four arguments, doesn’t have confidence in any of them so just decide to dump them all on us. Four weak arguments are actually weaker than one weak argument because it tells the listener you know your argument is weak.

So they don’t work together, but they don’t work apart either. People thinking Scotland has potential isn’t the problem. Put simply, if you look at attitude research work, people who don’t think it are simply not in the indy category. The target audience for independence is people who already believe Scotland has potential but are unconvinced the forces of independence know how to unlock it.

So it is selling a target audience something they already have. There is more mileage in the ‘fear of Farage’, but not this far out, and not just because John Swinney says it. It is definitely the case that worry about the drift of England is a strong motivator, but confidence in Scottish politicians to counter that or stand against it isn’t high.

We went through this with Brexit. Underneath, the Brexit-driven indy advocates (who thought we’d be propelled to independence by the Brexit vote) were half right. There were indeed big doubts about the UK at that point, but we didn’t channel the doubts into a path that led to us.

Think of it like this; you got in a car and the driver suddenly seems like a bit of a psycho. You get out – but is your response just to jump in the next car you see? Getting someone to leave a boring party is easier than persuading them to travel across town to your party.

The most risible of all of this is the cash bribe. Think of your football team, or your favourite friends, or the band you have loved since your 20s. How much would I need to pay you to stop liking those things? Stepping over that, let’s say it’s not your favourite thing. Let’s say you have a tatty old jacket on and someone says ‘if you take it off you’ll get a better one’.

But it’s cold and wet. I can tell you this; I’m not taking anything off until I have something to put on. I’ve heard all the Death of a Salesman pitches before. If it is something I might get mibby at an unpredictable point in the future and you’re definitely not promising me it, I’m placing low weight on it.

The conflict-averse team around Swinney dreams of a high-minded civic campaign where no-one has to get their hands dirty because an easy consensus gets civic Scotland to do the heavy lifting for you

Bribes don’t change behaviour like people think they do, and it doesn’t change behaviour until the money is in your hand. There is no such thing as an ‘IOU bribe’, and when you’re already in possession of IOUs from the same crowd, you’re just going to file it with ‘National Energy Company’.

If you really want to get into that business you need to explain how this money is being generated, where it is coming from and why you’re the people to unlock the magic to put it in my pocket. And even then I’m taking it with a pinch of salt.

So we get finally to my personal bete noir – the statement everyone agrees with being mistaken for the statement that motivates everyopne. Everyone agrees on a citizen’s right to decide the form of government they are governed by. No-one wants it done to them without their say. That doesn’t mean I necessarily want you to be that person who governs me. I can believe in the right to choose my form of government and want Westminster.

There is an assumption that high levels of agreement with a statement make that statement powerful, but let me try that out on you. Everyone agrees that sleeping outside overnight in the rain in November without cover and wearing only your pyjamas is a bad idea. Great – so buy my house.

No-one was planning to sleep in the rain in their pyjamas and so they’ll readily agree it would be a bad idea. It doesn’t mean they’re going to follow that logic to a very specific end point that I want them to arrive at. Things that everyone agrees with often hold less power, not more, because the ease of agreeing with it is its very weakness.

The conflict-averse team around Swinney dreams of a high-minded civic campaign where no-one has to get their hands dirty because an easy consensus gets civic Scotland to do the heavy lifting for you, everyone is happy and everything happens as it should. It is a fantasy. It is not how politics works.

This is all fairly basic stuff. Message consistency, absence of magical thinking (always A to B to C, never A to C), understanding psychological decision-making theory, basic understanding of the difference between commonality (believing the same thing) and motivation (doing the same thing as a consequence) – the list of misunderstandings of how strategy works is lengthy.

And that’s before we get to the ‘it’s all predicated on a majority no-one believes will happen based on a minority of votes which won’t represent a mandate anyway’. None of this is an indy strategy, it is a hodge podge of bad ideas designed to pacify the troops and hopefully drive some of the core vote to the poll. That’s all this is. It is cynical.

Of course, that’s proved more than enough for the SNP’s nodding heads. They all totally believe in Swinney’s secret plan. Like they believed in Sturgeon’s secret plan and like they’ll believe whatever the next secret plan is.

I guess if your audience’s threshold of credulity is that low, your strategy doesn’t need to work. But you leave yourself in a tricky position if over and over again you say things no-one believes, and they don’t even believe you believe.

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