Everyone’s getting their knickers in a twist about the cost of setting up the governmental structures of an independent Scotland.
Professor Patrick Dunleavy, of the London School of Economics, has been at loggerheads with the Treasury over the past few days after they claimed that it would take £2.7 billion and attributed that figure to his research.
Patrick is not a man to be trifled with or to have his work traduced. He immediately blogged that their figures were ‘bizarrely inaccurate’ and ‘badly misrepresented’ his key data. He accused them of being out by a factor of twelve. The Treasury Permanent Secretary has even admitted to ‘misbriefing’.
Tory leader Ruth Davidson and the Lib Dems’ Willie Rennie pursue me at First Minister’s Questions on these set-up costs. Their joint attack badly misfires when I announce that I have already held a meeting with Professor Dunleavy to discuss his work in detail.
This shouldn’t really have been too much of a surprise to them, since I had mentioned the possibility two weeks previously – at First Minister’s Questions.
Seems like the best way to keep a secret around here is to mention it at FMQs!
Then to Edinburgh’s New Club at the behest of the hugely likeable and totally inveterate right-winger Peter de Vink, who has invited me to address the free-market dining group the Tuesday Club – on a Thursday. Peter is totally convinced that, with enough exposure, I can recruit other free-marketeers to support freedom for their country.
It is an occasion to remember, but not so much for my success in recruiting free-marketeers. Rather a young American singer called Morgan Carberry sings ‘Caledonia’ with Edinburgh Castle as a backdrop through the window of the New Club dining room. ‘Caledonia’ always makes me cry, but Morgan’s story would bring a tear to a glass eye.
She had come to Scotland on a Marshall Scholarship, part of the post-graduation study programme introduced by former First Minister Henry McLeish. She is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire but now is to be flung out of the country because her personal relationship broke up within days of her qualifying for permanent residence. It is difficult to fathom how anyone could conceive that depriving the country of this intelligent and talented young woman could benefit anyone. It is, of course, exactly why we need our own immigration policy for our own country.
Day Nine: Friday 20 June
Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, is just about the only public official in London who is playing things with a straight bat.
I have a private phone conversation with him in the middle of a visit to an excellent youth diversionary behaviour project – before heading to the Youth Cabinet.
Mark is a straight down the line sort of guy. I suggest to him that the polls will tighten and that one way to prevent instability in the financial sector is for him to make a ‘Whatever happens, I’m in charge’ type of statement. That would just reflect reality. Whatever the result, the Bank will have that responsibility at least for the next two years. He promises to think about it and I believe he will.
The Youth Cabinet is in the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow and my speech and presentation are starting to catch alight, reflecting the political fires which I think are beginning to burn.
A remark by the late Donnie Stewart, MP for the Western Isles, perhaps reflects best where we are now. He described the political heather as ‘not burning but smouldering’.
The golfers in Aberdeen, the families at Meadowbank, these youngsters in Glasgow. The heather is not yet burning but it is starting to smoulder.
Donnie Stewart once found himself, rather unexpectedly, the leader of a band of eleven MPs in a crucial position in the close-run parliament after the October 1974 election. A Times journalist was dispatched to interview this hick from the sticks and was clearly not pleased to have been given the lowly task.
In his most patronising tone he asked Donnie: ‘And so, Mr Stewart, your outfit seriously believes in independence for Scotland?’
‘Nope,’ says Donnie, puffing on his pipe.
‘Well, Mr Stewart, you do believe in some sort of parliament for Scotland?’
‘Nope,’ says Donnie, still puffing.
‘Ah well, Mr Stewart, you do believe in more SAY for Scotland?’
‘Nope,’ says Donnie, shaking his head.
‘Well,’ says the journalist, by now completely exasperated, ‘what on earth do you believe in, Mr Stewart?’
‘TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION,’ came the majestic put-down from the Isle of Lewis!
After the Youth Cabinet I go off to Nairn to join Moira, since we are snatching a couple of days at Castle Stuart near Inverness. I have made up my mind to try and get a minimum of three escapes to golf courses during the referendum campaign.
This is to keep myself reasonably sane and my weight under some control. I need to try and stick to my 5–2 diet.
Moira is a great sounding board for what’s really going on in the country. She has been telling me since the spring that the race is tightening. Before that she hadn’t said much at all, which I took as a cause for real anxiety.
Moira lunches with ladies in Turriff – at Celebrations, a big concern in the town, where you can buy anything. It’s like an old-fashioned emporium, although certainly not old-fashioned in style, and it acts like a magnet. People come into town for it, and that has knock-on benefits for the rest of the high street.
These ladies are a diverse group – farmers’ wives, nurses, young mums and the like – and they meet for charity fashion shows and so on. And Moira takes the temperature.
We chat about the latest soundings over dinner at the Classroom restaurant in Nairn.
I meet an American party of golfers who are in high form and high jinks having played Nairn Western. One of them tells me that he has been doing his own opinion polling as he goes around the great links courses of Scotland.
According to him everyone in St Andrews is voting NO and everyone in Nairn is voting YES.
He suggests that I should be in St Andrews!
Day Ten: Saturday 21 June
Hundreds of people turn up for the YES Scotland’s Inverness office opening. An incredible crowd given that it was arranged online in a few hours.
I cut the ribbon in the company of the wonderful Julie Fowlis – the singing voice of the Disney movie Brave – and that fine man John Duncanson, the former news anchor of Grampian Television.
Golf calls and we travel to the Castle Stuart links. I play not too badly in tying the game. Round in 88, which for me these days is pretty good. I am now within 29 shots of shooting my age.
A quick drink at Nairn Western golf course, where they were opening their own halfway house – not devo max, but a whisky oasis for those who wish to recover from (or forget entirely) the first nine holes.
On arrival, I hold a conference call to make sure that we are properly equipped to respond to Patrick Dunleavy’s report on the cost of government for the Sunday Post. The call goes well, as I suspect so will the report.
Moira treats me to the Mustard Seed in Inverness, one of her favourite restaurants.
Day Eleven: Sunday 22 June
I’m back on the links today – but it is Patrick Dunleavy who hits a hole in one and bunkers the Treasury.
His report in the Sunday Post has gone well for us and very badly for the UK government. He estimates the initial set-up costs of independence at £200 million – in a different league from the Treasury’s overblown estimates which they had claimed to be based on his research.
Earlier, in the summer sunshine