Should we take the risk and vote Yes?

Two debates, lots of heat, sadly very little light and less than three weeks to go until the most important vote in my lifetime.

I wrote back in June of the three reasons why I'll vote No and since then I've often debated the issues with friends. In the last week, I've noticed a trend of more of these friends coming out for Yes. They have thought about it and decided it's worth the risk. Worth the risk to create a better Scotland, free from Westminster. Hope, it seems is creating a momentum.

I admit to being naturally drawn to the Union, but I'm not a Unionist by nature or voting history. My reasons for voting No remain unchanged and the main one of the currency remains unanswered.

When I have debated this, I'm told I need to be more positive and that we'll work it out as other countries have. Indeed this seemed to be Alex Salmond's response in the second debate. It's a good way of avoiding the question and the hard reality that needs an answer. As someone who is more normally accused of being too optimistic and positive I find it strange to be told that in this case I need to be more positive. The best I can make of it is that the Yes campaign preferred option creates a 'dependant Scotland' as the rest of the UK will need to approve our budget and that to be truly independent the best plan B is for our own Scottish currency. I suspect the Yes campaign know that long term to be truly independent they will need a Scottish currency, but realise that they can't win the vote on this basis. For a reasoned and balanced view this is a good place to start. http://www.davidhumeinstitute.com/images/stories/Directors_Blogs/DHI_blog_11_August_2014.pdf

The debate though now seems to have moved onto the aspirational grounds of hoping for a better future:

1. Of building a fairer and more just Scotland (sometimes expressed as getting rid of Westminster, by implication less fair and just.)
2. I want to "have a true democracy" where my vote counts
3. Where the NHS is safe.

All of the above points have far more resonance with people at the moment when we have a Tory Prime Minister, running an unpopular collation government which is making significant cuts to spending.

My view is that this debate and vote should transcend who is in Government as it is about the long-term future of our country and to polarise it around today's government is too short sighted and does a huge disservice to Scotland.

Political party fortunes wax and wane. I've seen huge victories for the Conservatives under Thatcher and then for Labour under Blair. The unrealistic hope and excitement in the country when both first took power and the belief from people across the UK that this change was needed and right was only matched by the disillusion that later kicked in. Obama had the same issue of expectation when he first became President.

Both Thatcher and Blair are of course now very divisive figures. As a voting public, we share a responsibility for this, we allowed them to create vastly over inflated expectations and/or we invested our hopes in them and then found it all wasn't so simple. My point is that at the time they made the country believe that a better future existed under them, but as the reality unfolded it didn't turn out the way we had hoped and we were able to change our minds.

There is no changing our mind if we vote Yes, so we need to be absolutely convinced by the argument for change. Is there more than hope to the aspiration for change?

Building a fairer and more just Scotland

Who doesn't want that? The real questions is about how to achieve it? A number of things bother me about the Yes campaign on this. Firstly, there seems to me to be a low level type of nationalism in this statement that I find very uncomfortable. I hear, "we are better than others and have a more natural tendency to fairness and justice than the rest of the UK".  Any statement that implies national superiority in a trait is concerning and the evidence that there is change in the fairness of people as you cross the border, plain nonsense.

Second, if we really want justice and fairness, why just for Scotland? Why not for the rest of the UK? Scotland's Labour Party played a part in bringing about the NHS and the welfare state, but it did so by working with others who had the same vision across the UK. If we are so worried about equality in the UK of the future, is the best we can do to walk away from the people of the North of England or Wales who have just as much history and stake in the NHS and welfare state?

Surely, if you really want justice and fairness then we need to fight for it in the UK and the use the UK's voice in the world to influence better outcomes.

To my mind, to walk away and say we're better and want to do this on our own, is a smaller mindset and not one truly fixed on creating a fairer society.

Lastly, a fairer more just society needs a thriving economy to pay for it and to have this we need to understand the currency issue.

But we'll get the Government we vote for..."a true democracy"

"Aye right, of course you will." The implication is that a) we don't have a true democracy at the moment and b) we will ALL get the government we vote for.

To say we don't have a democracy at the moment is of course ludicrous. One of the great things is about this democracy is that it allows us to have a referendum vote.

The reality of our democratic system is that the majority of the people don't get the government they vote for.  At the last election more people in Scotland didn't vote SNP than did, but they won more seats than all the others and so rightly form the Government.

So along with the majority of people in Scotland I can't say I got the government I voted for, but I can say we have democracy.

All we change if we vote Yes is the scale of the population. Will it feel any better for the majority of people in Scotland to know they didn't vote for a government in Edinburgh rather than London?  The only benefit I can see is that we won't have Westminster to blame, only Holyrood and this may focus us on finding more solutions to issues.

Where the NHS is safe

If you've stayed with me so far then you'll guess my response to this is that this is really a more tangible version of the first point on fairness.  It's a clever touchstone for the Yes campaign, but one that should be ignored as an argument for voting yes. We already run the NHS in Scotland and the debate is about future control of overall budget and therefore takes you back around to the economy and currency issues.

Hope is not a strategy

One of my first lessons in business came from someone who told me that "hope is not a strategy" and then pushed me to refine a goal and create a plan. The hope I'm hearing for a Yes vote gives me no sense of a real reason to take such a huge risk with economy, jobs and future wellbeing. If you still plan to vote Yes and have some doubts, please be really sure that you're going to get what you hope for.