A collection of blogs and articles about the independence referendum - that all ring true for me.

This is probably my last blog on the vote to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom and it is a collection of links to recent blogs, web sites and articles that have all resonated strongly with me in the last few days. 

I don't expect to change anyone's mind, but if you are still curious or indeed undecided, then perhaps these will help. 

All the main media (except The Sunday Herald) now have editorials in favour of NO, links here:

The Scotsman
The Herald (The Sunday Herald is for Yes)
The Daily Record
The Guardian 
The Economist
The FT

(The Times editorial is behind a firewall and not available and I can't find an Editorial in the Independent, let me know if you can.)

The Scottish Sun is yet to declare and there was speculation that it might declare for Yes, but according to an article yesterday Murdoch may be cooling on the Yes campaign.

Great Blogs on Why Vote NO.

Fay Young, blogged this week on the 'Cry the divided country' I found her description of 'Hysteria becomes a political tool used by the instigators to push through agendas that would never have been possible in a non-hysterical situation.' useful in terms of understanding why meaningful debate has become harder as the campaign nears the end.

I've also found the site WakeupScotland a useful source of informed comment and thought by respected commentators. 

The Ordinary Man at Nupateer, posted many great blogs and thoughts on the way the campaign has been conducted.

I think Ewan Morrison's blog today on why he has changed his mind from Yes to No fascinating and it's been getting a lot of coverage (already more than 60,000 hits at the time of writing).

Two blogs that also rang true for me this week are from people who say they could have been persuaded to vote Yes, but won't be. One from a well-known face - the writer  Alex Massie in the Spectator and the other from Kevin Scott. I thought both put their case very well.

The author CJ Sansom on Scottish independence: saying no will arrest rise of populist nationalism

My good friend Keith McIntosh wrote to The Scotsman recently, but sadly the letter wasn't published, but it's a great summary so I've reproduced it here:

August 2014

Dear Sir

Dependence or Inter-dependence? After two televised debates and three weeks to go to the poll, I remain convinced that what Mr Salmond is offering us are no more than emotional and highly aspirational arguments. He simply does not wish to accept realities. 

The most obvious of these is that his Plan A for the currency would create a "dependent" Scotland  way short of an independent country. We would be wholly dependent on the self-interest of a foreign country. Under Mr Salmond's best option on currency, the Bank of England and the Government of the rest of what was the United Kingdom would have absolute control over how our economy is run. We would no longer be "in the club" and able to wield influence to pursue Scotland's best interests. 

So much for protecting the sovereign will of the people of Scotland! What we enjoy together is the strength of "inter-dependence".What the Yes campaign is peddling is no more than several container-loads of snake-oil. We are not that gullible, surely.

Yours sincerely

Keith McIntosh 

My earlier blogs on the referendum were:

Scotland Better Together
Should we take the risk and vote Yes?

And this link will tell you more if you want to know how the vote will be counted 

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.

Three reasons why I think we’re Better Together.

Three reasons why I think we’re Better Together.

With less than 100 days till the Scottish independence referendum the bookies are quoting odds that are very much in favour of Better Together. Yet somehow, this still feels like the most important single vote I’ve ever been involved in. In 1979, it was clear that Scotland wasn’t going to vote for independence, whereas today I think it may be extremely close.

This is such an important issue, it’s not like a General Election where we can change our mind next time around. We need to get it right and preferably in a decisive way, so that there is no doubt about the ‘settled will of the people’.

I’ve got a lot of good friends who intend to vote ‘Yes’ and despite being a very proud Scot I’ve never been convinced. So over the last few months, I’ve gone back and questioned myself about what’s the right decision to make and is there anyway I could be persuaded to vote ‘Yes’. 

At the start, there was part of me who might have been persuaded by the argument for independence, but having taken time to examine the issues I’m now very firmly in the Better Together camp. 

My own experience is that friends who will vote Yes are, on the whole, much more vocal and passionate than the majority of people I speak to, who quietly say they would prefer not to break-up the UK. I understand that of Scotland’s four million or so voters in September, around one million are as yet undecided. I think those of us who believe in the Better Together argument need to speak up more and so I’ve decided for the first time in my life to publicly align myself with a political campaign. 

Why Better Together? The main three reasons are:

1. Political
2. Economic
3. Cultural & social

Political

Firstly, I feel I need to discount all the short-term arguments about current politicians and political parties. We are looking at taking a decision about a long-term future and dissolving a 300 year union. So ultimately the question is will independence give us increased political control to make a difference? The answer is linked to the economic argument, but also our influence on the European and world stage. Putting aside the debate about actually getting into Europe, an independent Scotland in Europe would be a small country with almost no influence and therefore less control. Things happen in Europe when the big countries want them to and the UK is the 6th biggest economy in the world (by GDP) and third in Europe. It has influence and Scotland at the moment can make some impact through the UK. (We can debate whether we, the UK, use that influence wisely, but being independent doesn’t guarantee wisdom in the future. So not an argument for ‘Yes’.)

I also think we are still on the journey of devolving powers to Scotland and don’t see the need to risk the break-up of the UK and the privileges this gives us.

Economic

This is perhaps the clearest area for me. We are part of a single market of 62 million people in the UK. The business I work in does almost 90% of it’s business in the rest of the UK, why would I want to create borders and barriers to that trade and all the other Scottish businesses that are required to bring prosperity. We can’t rely on oil for long-term future prosperity and I think that UK market has benefited Scotland over the years. London, does suck wealth to the South as it is a major global city, but being independent won’t change that reality. All the major world cities are becoming mini-states and causing problems for surrounding areas. This is an issue for English regions as much as Scotland.

The biggest issue for me is the currency. We trade, in the main, with the rest of the UK so the pound is perfect. The Euro is discredited and still has structural problems, so that’s not an option. (Side issue, if an Independent Scotland joined Europe would we need to join the Euro? We don’t know.)

So assuming we want to keep the pound, there are two options open to an independent Scotland:

1. Monetary union with the rest of the UK. A monetary union means sharing decisions and actually pulls you towards a political union (this seems counter intuitive, if we’ve just voted for independence) and as the small partner with only 10% of currency, do we think the other 90% are going to let us make decisions on tax and spending that have an adverse impact on them? The UK would under this arrangement then provide the central bank to underwrite debts of Scotland’s banks and Scottish government borrowing. So as independent country, we’d be seeking approval for our plans, but without any vote. Less control and less security than we have at the moment.
2. The other option of shadowing the pound is even worse, as you then don’t have a central bank to act as the lender of last resort and as a result Scotland’s financial services sector (currently 12 times the size of Scotland’s GDP) could very well collapse, with a huge impact on the economy.

I also can’t find a way to justify the huge unspecified cost of independence which we’d all have to pay. As a vanity project, it would make the Edinburgh trams project appear eminently sensible!

Cultural and social

I think we underestimate the ties that bind the UK together. Go back to the summer of 2012 and look at the impact that the Olympics had and the sense of belonging that so many people had in the sporting achievements of all our British athletes. Even before the games started, I was particularly surprised by the great reception the Olympic torch got as it toured Scotland, people wanted to be part of this British event. Yes, our English neighbours can have a very English centric view of the country, but I suspect our own countrymen and woman in the more remote parts of Scotland think the same of the central belt and Edinburgh.

Lastly, I think Scotland has a proud tradition of engaging with the world and having a massive influence. We have fully participated at all levels in the UK and ideas from Scotland have helped shaped democracy across the world. I want us to be part of a confident nation that continues to engage and influence for the good and I think you do that from inside the UK and not by withdrawing. A truly confident Scotland will face the reality of being a small nation on the edge of Europe by relishing the challenge and stepping forward to play it’s part in the UK and Europe.

Peter Casebow

8 June 2014