As a newly elected member I was perhaps oversensitive about reputational issues, and a defamation action followed to bring the local Tories to heel, masterminded by my great friend and lawyer, Peter Chiene.
All of which is a reminder that stuff and nonsense in politics did not start with social media – it just makes it more immediate and more widespread.
Monday 9 June
Today is the day that the media has designated as the official launch of the 100-day campaign and so it is redolent with political opportunity. For my part I end up doing some personal polling in a golf club bar – and come away thinking we really can do this, despite the gap.
Nicola kicked it all off this morning with an all-women Cabinet and public question-and-answer session in Edinburgh. I take over in the afternoon and go back to Aberdeen to cover Sky and the BBC network.
I do the Sky piece from Nigg Bay Golf Club in Aberdeen, a municipal course with great views over Aberdeen harbour. Cheekily, someone – one of the green keepers I’m told – has hung a union flag on a fence in a vain attempt to get it into camera shot.
However, the guys in the clubhouse are very keen to see me, and after a few drinks I end up as an honorary member. It should be said that the folk in the bar are bang on a key YES demographic – mainly middle-aged, working-class men – but, even so, this crowd is a pretty easy and enthusiastic conversion to the cause.
I tell Geoff Aberdein in a phone call afterwards that, regardless of a general lack of encouragement in polls, I am confident that we have a real shot at this. The 100-day coverage also reinforces my view that as we move into the campaign period proper then the inevitable quickening of the pace will be of great benefit to YES.
Tuesday 10 June
I phone in to the YES campaign meeting tonight and find them a bit downbeat. Turns out that they’ve had access to a TNS opinion poll, which shows little or no movement to YES.
It is always a wonder to me that people in politics allow their morale to be affected by the latest opinion poll, instead of trusting their own political antennae.
It’s hard to give a pep talk down the phone, but I’m open and direct with my feelings: that we might not be there or even close, but everything is possible at this point. We’re not close to winning but we CAN win and the campaign has to believe that. Part of this confidence comes from my informal canvass in Nigg Bay Golf Club. My gut tells me that things are going pretty well.
Wednesday 11 June
Could be said that we held a Gunn to our own heads today.
Stayed in Strichen to cover the Oil and Gas UK conference in the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre. The speech goes well and I’m ready to face the cameras when I get a pretty panicky call from Geoff Aberdein to brief me on a self-inflicted wound.
For reasons (not altogether clear), my highly experienced special adviser [SPAD] Campbell Gunn decided to email the Daily Telegraph to inform them that Clare Lally, the ‘ordinary mother’ who featured in their coverage of the 100-day Better Together launch, was actually a member of Labour’s shadow cabinet and former Labour Provost of Glasgow Pat Lally’s daughter.
The first suggestion is correct, the second total nonsense. I know Clare personally. She is the mother of a quadriplegic daughter and a carers’ champion.
All of which wouldn’t have caused much of a stir in normal times, but what on earth Campbell thought he was doing emailing the Daily Telegraph is beyond my ken.
The paper is the self-appointed ringleader of a madcap old-fashioned media preoccupied in their conspiracy to discredit the YES campaign and all our works. There is therefore no point whatsoever in engaging with them or wasting time on them or explaining ourselves to them. Still less in sticking out our chin and letting them hit it.
The Telegraph, true to form, conflates Campbell’s foolish email with a story of the online abuse of Clare to concoct an attack. This is yet another episode in the claims of systematic online abuse from the YES side by so-called ‘cybernats’. In fact it is not ‘nats’, it is nuts. I deal with the TV interviews easily enough. I’m also asked about J. K. Rowling, who has given a million pounds to Better Together and has also been attacked online.
It is pretty obvious that the Clare and J. K. stories will now centre on the online abuse and there is next to nothing we can do about it. This story now has all the ingredients to take it beyond the Telegraph obsessions and into the tabloids and TV.
The connection with politics is coincidental. Internet trolls get their kicks by attacking anyone in the news about anything. In addition, the only research on the politics of this is by a Strathclyde University academic, Dr Mark Shephard, who has concluded in his interim report that the YES campaign is more of a target than a source of internet abuse.
However, the truth is that there is no high ground in this matter: any society and any subject is fair game for the pathetic clowns who get their kicks by abusing other people online behind the shield of anonymity. Most claims of the NO campaign don’t touch us: they are too exaggerated or just plain silly. This might.
I instruct Campbell to apologise at once and to make it clear that he distances himself from the online abuse of anyone at any time. Of course the ability to stop internet trolls is non-existent.
Let there be no doubt about the reasoning behind the Daily Telegraph attack. They would like nothing better than to force us off social media where we are dominating and back to a conventional campaign which we would inevitably lose.
Ironically the latest Survation poll from the Labour-supporting Daily Record confirms my hunch about the way the wind has been blowing, with 46 per cent YES and a big lead for the SNP in the party ratings for Holyrood. In my opinion it overstates YES support but does give an indication of the direction of travel.
* The SNP 79 Group was a ginger group set up after the rout in the 1979 election which argued for a declared left-of-centre programme from the SNP. One of its campaigns in 1981–82 was in support of workforce occupations of factories in the face of industrial closures. Although the 79 Group was defeated internally, many of its ideas strongly influenced the development of the SNP and many key members, including the author, went on to achieve high office.
Day One: Thursday 12 June
‘Campbellgate’ duly dominates First Minister’s questions and I repel boarders as best as I can. Even for the rough old trade of politics there is something pretty unsavoury about today’s line of questioning. All of the opposition leaders know Campbell and indeed have known him for many years. They all said wonderful things about him when he collected his well-merited lifetime achievement award for journalism earlier this year. They all know that his email has been taken out of context by the Telegraph and that he had nothing whatsoever to do with online abuse. Yet here they all are lining up to present him as the devil incarnate and baying to end his career in an ignominious sacking!
Ruth Davidson even compared him to Donald Dewar’s SPAD John Rafferty, who was sacked in 1999 for allegedly making up death threats against then Labour Health Minister Susan Deacon. I have no intention whatsoever of sacking Campbell. My administration has been grounded on loyalty to colleagues. Even when they make silly mistakes. Leaders who fling people overboard can’t lead.
I call Campbell in at 5 p.m. and administer a formal written warning, only the second one for a SPAD in seven years. The first was for an unfortunate who managed to leave Cabinet papers in a pub. The rules drawn up in the aftermath of the fall of Gordon Brown’s spinner Damian McBride (resigned when caught trying to peddle made-up rumours about the private lives of Tory politicians) are poorly and loosely drafted. This seems the proportionate