Unanswered Question

Tonight is YESmas eve. The snow of leaflets has almost stopped. Tomorrow is the day we all have control of our destiny. What we decide will keep it there, or not.

So a note for the undecided, the ones it would seem the Labour party are desperately calling on to rise and vote NO. Having signed on their website to ask a few referendum questions of my own, they have me on their mailing list and, boy, have they been busy. Four times today alone, have I had emails from them: from the party itself, Gordon Brown, Johann Lamont and, a few minutes ago, Ed Milliband himself. I politely declined the first three and two of my answers are posted here. Ed Milliband, I steadfastly ignored. At least I wasn't in public transfixed by a real person, looking like as duck in the crosshairs. The question I'd asked, by the way, remain unanswered.

That's been a theme, a mantra of the NO campaign. Too many unanswered questions. It cuts both ways. We've had 'answers' from NO which in themselves have been questionable, answers they've spontaneously provided to questions about currency and pensions, for example, where they said the opposite of what, when checked, was true.

NO's missing answers actually boil down to this: none of the answers YES give are ones we like. The truth is out there, as they say, on websites, social media, in the Wee Blue Book, even in the mainstream media, if people seek out what they need to know. Some don't suit the NO campaign, some do. Information is like that. You may pick and choose, build your argument. Just be honest, though, when you simply dislike or disagree with some of the answers you've been given.

In the last week, of course, there's a wholly new set of unanswered questions. These are contained in the Gordon Brown surprise package. In this case, we have no answers either. Partly because the unseemly timing hardly allows anyone to ask; partly because answers with meaningful detail have to wait until we've taken the decision for which they're crucial. The package, ratified ('rat' being the operative syllable) by the three superheroes of Westminster without a nod from either party nor electorate, is a bucket of fog.

There's the difference. Choose, if you're NO, between answers you have actually heard but may not like and obscure promises no-one might even deliver but which you want to believe in because they sit on the other side of the decision. Choose, if you're YES, between a future you aspire to or a future shrouded in misdirection, a political conjuring trick.

This is the eleventh hour, or will be when I finish this. Actually the only unanswered question is the one we answer tomorrow. Put, as Justin Curry said, our saltire in its box. It's now or never. Screw your courage to the sticking place. Hold the line.

Oh, aye, eat your cereal.

Oh, dear... Dear Douglas...

Oh, my God! The Labour machine is working overtime. Now Douglas Alexander wants me to be so inspired by Gordon Brown's performance at the NO rally today that I'll vote NO tomorrow. This is too much. What a waste of bytes and bandwidth. I've had to let him down too. Sob.

This email also came from Labour HQ in London. Does that mean Scottish Labour is as irrelevant as I think it is?

He sent me this:

Here's what I emailed back.

Dear Douglas

I don’t think he did. He was extremely impassioned but, to be honest, there are too many unanswered questions. The new powers package came too late for me. I’ve been waiting for two years to hear a vision for Scotland’s future in the Union. To produce something this late is simply an insult. You’re asking me to sign up to something with no detail that you’ll piece together afterwards. And you have to get the party to agree to it, then the Tory and Lib Dem parties. The Tory back benches have the knives out already. And if you think Labour will win in the next UK election, you’ll really need to deliver on the mystery box well before it or else the Scottish NO vote will be adding their voice to a continuing YES-oriented movement. They’ll desert Scottish Labour at the first mis-step. The outcry will be loud, very loud.

As for Gordon’s performance. From what I’ve seen, there was passion in it but he still comes across as smug and hectoring. His performance with David Dimbleby was an even greater testament to a man not being entirely frank. He grinned too insincerely and too often, he was rude to David Dimbleby and his foot-tapping body language showed he was leaking badly.

Also, I saw you in the Milliband debacle video the other day. I don’t know if Ed meant to actually say something but standing there like a duck facing a retriever was hardly edifying. I guess you had to step in. Then after Johann quoted the experts over Trident and put her hand on her heart to say ‘if I thought that the YES campaign would save those poor children, I'd be voting YES’. By which time Ed had snuck off, followed by minders and camera crew, then you and Johann. Not much engagement there.

Well, you've guessed it, I’m for the other way. I’ve voted Labour in the past but I'm very unlikely to do that again. First the earth will have to stop heaving in Cumnock New Cemetery (Keir Hardie - remember him - he’s deid and buried there. Then you’ll need to tak a tumble to yersels. Big time.

So, it’s a YES for me.

Cheerio

Edwin

I'm off to watch Bake Off.

Dear Gordon…

I've had three emails today from Labour. One from Johann Lamont and two from Labour HQ in One Brewer's Green, London. One of the latter came from the man himself, Gordon Brown.

So, apart from Johann telling me to phone somebody so I can help the reffy rend-em effort, the rest come from darkest London. Very in touch, I thought. 

The first asked me to donate a tenner to the campaign. It's hard to see how they'll spend that in the next 24 hours, but, hey… I replied (since it's a proper email address, onenationpolitics@labour.org.uk) and said sorry. I added they'd blown it for me and that I hear Keir Hardie is spinning in his grave.

But Gordon, now, he sent the following:

Edwin,

News broke yesterday that could swing the outcome of the referendum: the SNP have been hiding plans to make £500 million of cuts to our NHS if there's a Yes vote.

The NHS lie of Alex Salmond has been exposed. People need to know the truth about what he will do to Scotland if they vote Yes. 

Can you share this on Facebook now?

Tomorrow we will cast the most important vote of our lives, a decision we can never go back on. It's vital that people can vote based on the facts — not Alex Salmond's falsehoods. 

Click here to share the graphic now.* 

Thank you.

Gordon

* I couldn't bring myself to show it here. It appears, Yessified, above, though. Oh, and I removed the link. Don't want to distract anyone…

I had to reply. I doubt if he'll ever read it but…

Once again sorry, Gordon. 
 
You’ve misrepresented the threat to the Scottish NHS from changes in Barnett consequentials triggered by spending reductions as privatisation affects NHS England. The Treasury has the final say on the formula and can block (as they did with the Olympics) any beneficial knock on through Barnett to Scotland. 
 
Despite Andy Burnham saying, loud and clear, the NHS in England is under threat from privatisation, you haven’t even discussed or acknowledged that. Here you follow the Tory line, an almost opposite view..
 
You’ve never acknowledged how TTIP represents a huge threat to the NHS nationally in the event of a NO. Even though the Tories have publicly stated (on the BBC) that it’s right to include the NHS in the arrangement. Despite representations from unions and campaign groups, Vince Cable has refused to remove it from the table.
 
If there’s a financial gap to plug in Scotland it’s because of successive cuts already in Barnett, caused by Osborne’s austerity, an austerity you have pledged to continue if you return to government.
 
A YES vote secures to the Scottish people the power to vote for a government which will bring them the changes they want. This may be the SNP but it could be Labour (despite you dodging the question with Mr Dimbleby). Indeed, you actually suggested you’d rather Scots suffered the occasional Tory government in future rather than being able to elect governments for themselves, even they were Labour ones.
 
Most galling of all is the fact you have been so willing to align with the Tories. In particular, you silence yourselves up here and never even utter the criticisms you voice in another place. For a former Labour voter like myself, you’ve confirmed my disaffection. I think you’ve betrayed your deepest principles. The fathers (and mothers) of the Labour movement in Scotland have simply been betrayed.
  

As for lies, I noted, last night, you rested your case on several points which had already been contradicted by events or pronouncements from the UK government. Pensions was one. There is no threat to existing pensions because the UK government guaranteed them. Future pensions are another matter but as uncertain in the Union as you imply in an independent Scotland. To refer to a pensions threat in so broad a fashion, was so disingenuous as to be, effectively, a lie. So much of what you and your NO partners say is in that vein, at best a grain of truth spun into huge falsehoods. 
Finally, I have to conclude your eleventh hour contribution to the debate is a calculated strategy. The ‘new powers’ package and the collective vow from all three of you is planned deliberately to flash a deal before the people so late they have the briefest moment to say yes or no to it. Otherwise, if it is actually an afterthought, it’s lateness is an insult. Why could you, in Labour, at least, not have embraced adult debate, published this vision for the future in time for it to be discussed? Was it your buy-in to the arrogance of Westminster? And did you also subscribe to the London view that Scotland is a joke with self-determination as its fantasy punchline?
 
You continually raise the question of uncertainty. Independence is full of it, I agree. Yet you never acknowledge the uncertainties of the continuing union, except to say vote for us and we’ll fix it later. Now, when you say there are too many unanswered questions, don’t you see how that also applies to your last-minute mystery package? There far too many unanswered questions there too. Too many contradictions as well, Gordon, for me to believe in.
 
So, sorry, Mr Brown. It’s a YES from me.

Ah, well, time to tell Johann to shove it.

Wow, the Vow

The Vow, so late in the day, is still a pig in a poke. This is the vision we've all been waiting for. Now it's waved under our noses with moments to spare. No time for scrutiny.

Why so late? We're being treated like the followers of the Great Prophet Zarquon whose second coming was eagerly awaited. He eventually turned up in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe seconds before the end. Cheers, then BANG!

At least, for Zarquon, that was his second coming. For the No Better Together campaign this is the first we heard of it. Unless you count the sporadic morsels of future policy dribbled out since the spring by the individual parties.

For me, such abyssmal timekeeping is just disrespectful. Really, it's despicable verging on wicked. It's also calculated to deceive. We're being asked to sign up quick, and never mind the small print. Sign now or the game's a bogey. Why wasn't this presented clearly to us months ago? Is it really a back of the fag packet effort? Or is it a calculated sleight of hand to spoof us with a bag of half promises too tangled to tease out in the final days and too complicated to deliver.


Here's the gift, the vow they didn't call a pledge in case we remembered how Nick Clegg broke his last one on tuition fees. More powers, more fairness, guarantees of Holyrood for ever, Barnett set in stone. Not a lot of it bears scrutiny.

The powers are poorly defined, broadbrush headlines. If you consider them a moment you get this: Scotland sends its taxes to the Treasury (as before), they send only some of it back (Barnett), then Scotland gets to tax itself some more to do the extra stuff like protect the NHS. Westminster still keeps a chunk back, like it's done for years. That's left hand giving and right hand taking. A shyster's trick.

And fairness, laudable but vague. Where has it been throughout the last Labour administration and the years of Cameron's Tories? Buried under austerity, food banks and endemic inequality that began as New Labour polished up what was left of their principles and joined the spiv establishment.

Holyrood enshrined. But, as ever, no government can bind the policies of another to come. Enshrined but still vulnerable to the political weather. Or just plain revenge.

And Barnett, preserved. Not in law. Barnett is a Treasury mechanism and can be varied as they see fit. Remember the London Olympics? The Barnet formula should have added a proportional amount to funding for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland because of the extra public spending on the London infrastructure. That didn't happen because they decided the Olympics benefitted all of the UK. If public spending is reduced, we lose; if the Treasury wants to finagle us into not getting so much, they'll just do it regardless.

Then, against a background of growing Westminster indignation, we see Tory MPs say this pledge comes at too high a price. English people feel the same because no-one asked them. How can three parties who oppose each other, yet have stood hip to hip against Scottish independence, how can they hope to deliver any of this? Not while the back benches fume and sharpen their little political knives. Not while the groundswell of English and Welsh public opinion echoes Scottish cries for fairness (hah!) and self government.

Even Nick Robinson, recovered from his embarrassment over the Treasury business, said tonight on the BBC,  they have no detail on these proposals. They can't give any details.

I watched Eck tonight with David Dimbleby. His was the affable, reasonable politician speaking to 'David'. Brown preceded him, 'Mr Dimbleby, you don't understand', he said several times. Compared with Eck's relaxed commitment, Gogs had his customary smug grin and his endlessly tapping feet. They showed just how much he was leaking. Body language is a curse.

Pledge? The Vow? There's nothing there, just a headline with no story. The poke has no pig in it though it's full of porkies. Wake up you NO people! These jokers have you by the snouts. The only pigs around are the flying kind, migrating to warmer latitudes for the duration.

We've better things to do, us and you, than go on listening to this. We've a huge job ahead. We're building the future. That is something we can do better together.

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.

Ordinary People - Where Did They Go?

Weeks and weeks ago, when all this began, everyone was ordinary. At least, that was the claim. I remember the new websites, the blogs, the media scoops. The people we heard about were always ordinary: single mums, pensioners, office workers. Every one was concerned about our future but none claimed special status or importance of any kind. Never mind that some turned out to be activists, well-heeled party donors, the great and the good climbing their respective greasy polls to influence and office.

This was a very much a feature of the NO campaign and a bit suspect, part of a duplicitous urge to misrepresent.

But I remember thinking, who's ordinary? What's that about? I'd followed National Collective, and lots of other YES sites, and found the tone of stories there tended more toward how extraordinary ordinary people were. There didn't seem to be much need to claim some just-plain-folks label to give political choice validity.

So, what was the deal with ordinary? I felt it sprang from a need to hide the hand of power as it fiddled about and manipulated. It presented ordinariness as a front which, in the end, said to me, they think ordinary people are puppets, hollow, lifeless shapes to be animated by an unmentionable purpose.

I believe the YES side emphasised the opposite: people were amazing, creative, different, welcoming difference. Paradoxially, it said, we're in this together and embraced everyone from company directors to labourers and didn't make a fuss about it.

That was how it was and the status quo, NO, was represented by figures, unassuming, normal, just like the rest of us. Except they weren't. Under the surface, there were the vested interests, those who wanted us to accept a smokescreen of the same-as-you when that was so far from the truth.

All very well. We saw the rise and fall: the Vote No Borders nonsense, embarrassing attempts to puff a whiff of the grass roots from nothing; the intransigent flannel from Scottish Labour, trotting out discredited horror stories from the mouths of the faithful; the long line of put up jobs and corporate jobsworths showering gloom on our heads like some dismal rain.

And now we see it. A northbound in-flux of Westminster might, the charge of the great hundred galloping to our rescue. Messages of doom wrapped in this strange love-hate they have. The long line of bankers and business big cheeses giving us their lines of prospective failure, temporary good times, long-term decline and, generally, our complete uselessness and hopelessness in the face of a future we can't comprehend and certainly can't handle.

Now, amongst all these prominent figures, who's no longer there? Mr, Mrs and Ms ordinary. These poor sods, once pushed to the front, are floundering in the wake of the figures who are really important. They've outlived their usefulness. Nobody needs their homespun sincerity, even if it was manufactured, They're dead ducks. They can't save the Union. They never could, but for a while, they served to stave off the notion of independence.

Now that strategy's stopped working, the big guns are wheeled out. The ordinary, the closet NO activists, the party faithful, a few door-chappers, the flag-knitters and wavers, all of those folk, doubtless sincere in their way, are left by the wayside. Now's the time of the ones who matter: the bankers, the party leaders, the business executives, tame academics, mandarins and apparatchiks, the fantastically wealthy. They're the ones who'll save the Union. Sod the little people.

I hardly wondered where the ordinary folk had gone. I'd half-expeected them to be swept aside. Expendable. I'm truly sorry for them. They must have lent their names, their faces and their heartfelt beliefs to the cause, only to find the seven hundred horsemen of the establishment ride over them like a wave, also too wee, too poor and too stupid to make a difference. We knew you never could. You were the electoral cannon fodder, the diversionary tactic, the dispensable and gullible troops in our war of blind self interest. Stand aside for the elite!

Truth to tell, there are no ordinary people left. NO has trampled them under their parade of the important. YES has never thought ordinary was any way to describe people who engaged themselves in our different visions of a collective future. All I can say, to all the ordinary NOs, don't be so easily sidelined. Vote with your hearts (and I, for one, will respect it) but don't fall for the disrespectful trick that raised you up and chucked you aside when the chips were down.

To YES, I say, go on. Be extraordinary, surprise us, principally yourselves. Ordinary was never a word to describe any of us. Rise to the occasion. Be as magnanimous in victory as you would be proud in defeat. Honour the same in your opponents. We have a country to build. None of us are ordinary people. We're so much more.