Genies and Bottles

Do you think, when it’s done and dusted that’ll be it? I mean, YES or NO, the whole scene in Scotland and the UK has changed. The can of worms is opened, the genie is out of the bottle, the stable door is open and the horse, well, whatever way it turns, has bolted.

Politics as usual is the phrase that haunts me now. That’s because I don’t think we can go back to it. 

Once upon a time there was a public meeting. About a local issue. Feeling was high: the local council was thought to have acted against the interests of a community. I remember one councillor spoke in support. Even he, in apparent solidarity, said, now the community had voiced its concerns, we should leave it for elected members to deal with.

We can take it from here. Now you’ve spoken, be silent again. Let us take care of it.

I realised then, democracy is about the right to dissent, not just the right to agree.

 

In the referendum YES is the dissenting voice, shifting away from the status quo of the Union; NO is the voice of no change and, I fear, politics as usual. 

For me, democracy is free speech, every voice’s right to be heard, never silenced once a vote is cast, to let others run reckless with its mandate. We should always remember, if assent is a rubber stamp, dissent is proof of democracy working; argument and debate is its beating heart.

So we come to genies and bottles. Come next Friday, do we just stand down? Do we accept, if it’s NO, the promises we’ve seen writ large on tabloid front pages? Do we let the politicians in Westminster (because that’s where the promises have to turn from vague puff about fairness and guarantees into power), do we let them make the running? Should we watch them settle back into the yah-boo arguments of Westminster, making decisions and amendments to decisions because we voted them the right?

Or will we continue the popular engagement we’ve created here, both sides, YES and NO, and use its voice to demand change and that promises are kept?

Come next Friday, if we’ve said YES, do we just stand down or will we, as one older woman said to Robin McAlpine, not go back to our sofas? Will we run with the vision, from the White Paper, from the Greens, from the radical left, and build a Scotland where the voice we’ve raised now is still heard? Can we re-engage with, maybe even change, Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems who are left here in Scotland?

Can we do politics in a better way than the complacent, haranguing politics on the green benches of London? Can we make it more inclusive, further devolved so that it’s full of argument and a white heat that shows our mettle without rancour?

Make no mistake. The challenges begin on the 19^th, whether we’re holding Westminster to account as never before to honour their commitments within the Union, or making sure the mandate we’ve given as an independent nation to negotiate a settlement with the Union is pursued with vigour.

The work has hardly started. The genie is out of the bottle all right. It’s in our voices now and it will be heard. Think about your choices. 

If you vote NO, be prepared to raise your voice with ours to get what we were offered. 

If, like me, you vote YES, be prepared to work together as a nation, to speak out, raise our voices to build it.