Michael Keating delves into both the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns to reveal their contradictions
When the Yes campaign was launched in 2012, I did not give it much chance of success. Support for independence had been steady for around twenty years at around 30%, depending on the precise question. The big change had happened under the Thatcher and Major governments, when Scotland experienced serious political alienation. The victories of the SNP in the 2007 and 2011 Scottish elections happened against the background of slight falls in support for independence. Given all this, a vote of 45% for independence is a significant achievement, as is the fact that ‘yes’ gained in voting intentions during the campaign. Of course, 45% is still a defeat but the strong support for various ‘devolution-max’ options has meanwhile shown that many people were not content with the choice that they were offered.
We might conclude that ‘yes’ won the campaign but lost the vote. It was able to fight a ‘ground war’, against the ‘air war’ which the ‘no’ side pursued. The mobilization of people not associated with the SNP was critical, reaching into social networks and communities that had often lost touch with politics. ‘Yes’ was able to seize upon, and make its own, fields common to both sides but which previously belonged to the unionist parties.
The first one was ‘Scotland’, obvious territory for the SNP, but one the unionist parties have played very successfully in the past, standing up for Scotland against London and playing Scottishness into a pluri-national vision of what it means to be British. Since the devolution and the advance of the SNP, however, they have lost their ability to play the Scottish card. Scotland, for its part, has been changed from a historic legacy and a cultural reference into a vibrant political community.
The second field is union, where the unionists should have the advantage. Yet they have lost their old understanding of union in ever-more contrived attempts to define ‘Britishness’. Of the six Unions (political; European; monarchical; monetary; defence; European), Alex Salmond only wanted to end one, thus, capturing the traditional unionist discourse brilliantly.
The third field is that of welfare, historically Labour’s. The ‘yes’ side used the UK coalition’s welfare reforms to suggest that Scotland would be a more caring society. Scottish Labour insists that welfare is essentially a UK matter and that the UK is essentially about welfare, proclaiming to the end that a Labour government in Westminster is the only solution. This ignores the changing contours of welfare, the existence of a Scottish level of solidarity, and the distinct line taken in Scotland on universalism and service delivery. Labour now talks about devolution of welfare but clearly does not believe it in substance
The fourth field is that of the economy, public spending and taxation. Here the unionists had a built-in advantage, given the obvious risks of independence, yet the unionists came close to undermining their own position. Threats can be an effective weapon in politics but only if they are not overdone. There was a real problem about sharing sterling, which the ‘yes’ side never effectively addressed. Yet this message was lost in exaggerated claims about losses of firms and jobs and, perhaps most absurdly, claims that prices in shops would rise after independence (belying a basic understanding of how market economies work). The threat of the banks to relocate to England confirmed the idea that the UK parties still think that rescuing banks from their own follies is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money. This was something about which the SNP has always been very wary, however, and only a few commentators made the obvious comment when, on the last weekend, the banks threatened to move their headquarters (but not the jobs), namely, if UK taxpayers are prepared to rescue what used to be nominally Scottish banks, that makes independence a lot easier.
By implying that Scotland could not prosper on its own, unionists suggested that Scots are not capable of managing their own affairs. The Treasury analysis papers argued that Scotland was a rich country, that it got more than its share of public expenditure, that it could not afford its public services but that, thanks to the mysteries of the Barnett formula, English taxpayers would foot the bill. This was bound to come to the ears of English politicians, who will make much of it in the months to come. It infuriated people in Wales, where there has long been discontent about Barnett. The Labour Party’s insistence in its various papers that expenditure is allocated across the UK on the basis of need is simply wrong. Barnett does not, and never has, had anything to do with need.
As the old politics comes to an end, Scotland will have to pay its own way but the ‘yes’ side never presented a convincing socio-economic model. It made gestures to the Nordic countries but the SNP stuck with pledges to cut business taxes and not increase others. There is a future for a social democratic Scotland and it does not require independence. It does require more control over taxation, a welfare reform based on enablement rather than punishment, and a commitment to new forms of social partnership. In the last year, Scotland has been remade as a political community, a space for the discussion of the big policy choices and for social compromise. This represents real progress.
Michael Keating is Professor of Politics at the University of Aberdeen and Director of the Scottish Centre on Constitutional Change. His most recent book (with Malcolm Harvey) is “Small Nations in a Big World. What Scotland Can Learn” (Luath Press).