My remarks at the press conference were designed to move the YES campaign into ultra-positive mode:
Today’s historic signing of the Edinburgh Agreement marks the start of the campaign to fulfil that ambition [of independence]. It will be a campaign during which we will present our positive, ambitious vision for a flourishing, fairer, progressive, independent Scotland – a vision I am confident will win the argument and deliver a YES vote in autumn 2014.
The Edinburgh Agreement allowed for the referendum to be held up to the end of 2014. The proper parliamentary process meant that a year to eighteen months was the necessary preparation time, but basically this left a choice available for the referendum to take place at any point in 2014.
My decision was to go later rather than sooner. It was what I had committed myself to in the election campaign. In addition we were behind in the polls – perhaps not by as much as the Tories believed, but still well behind.
We needed the time to gear up a campaign to take us from the low 30s to over 50 per cent, a seemingly daunting task. However, we also knew from our private polling that the total potential YES support was up to 60 per cent (‘potential’ means the number of people who said they were prepared to vote for independence under certain circumstances).
But away from all the pomp and poignancy of the historic day, there were a couple of moments when I believe the Cameron mask slipped a little. Signs that suggested his absolute confidence of late 2011 was faltering and that his vaunted attachment to Scotland was based on precious little of substance.
I had asked for some private time with Cameron immediately before and after the signing of the Agreement.
Beforehand this was no more than making sure that the television shots of our entrance into my office looked natural. I confess to having arranged the room so that the all-yellow map of the 2011 Scottish election results was immediately behind my seat. I even moved in the Permanent Secretary’s table for us to sit around. In the way these things work in the civil service, it is a rather more impressive piece of furniture than the First Minister’s table! Cameron and I went in together to join our teams and I showed him my John Bellany painting which adorned the First Ministerial room in St Andrew’s House. I mentioned to him that the painting was of Macduff Harbour and pointed out that it was pretty close to where his grandfather had founded a school in Huntly.
‘Ah!’ breezed the Prime Minister. ‘I’ve never actually been there.’
Given the important business to hand, I suppressed my surprise that someone should be so rootless as to never have thought of visiting a place presumably of importance to their family origins. However, of more political significance was the conversation that took place after the Agreement had been signed and the others had left.
The Prime Minister asked me when we were intending to hold the poll. I said the autumn of 2014.
He replied: ‘But that won’t allow enough time before the …’ and then stopped himself.
I took the half-finished sentence to mean that it wouldn’t allow time to negotiate independence before the UK election of May 2015. In other words, he wasn’t so absolutely confident that he hadn’t considered the political implications of a YES vote on Westminster parliamentary arithmetic.
Westminster underrated the importance of the timing of the referendum. Everyone likes to be noticed and 2014 was set to be a huge year for Scotland when we could bask in the international spotlight.
Cameron had a blind spot on this. He believed the centenary of the Great War in 2014 would be of more significance in reminding Scots of the glory of the union.
This attitude betrayed a huge misunderstanding of the Scottish psyche. As a martial nation Scots tend to revere soldiers but oppose conflict. We have no time for politicians who believe, like Cameron, that the anniversary of the bloody carnage of the First World War should be celebrated ‘like the Diamond Jubilee’.
There were more spilled guts than shared glory in the Great War.
Cameron thus overrated the impact of war and underrated the impact of peaceful endeavour. In 2014 Scotland would host the Commonwealth Games, the Ryder Cup, even the MTV awards. It was also the Year of Homecoming.* Into this heady mix there would come a referendum on self-determination.
Once the date was set the challenge was how to create a campaign that would increase support by the 20 percentage points required to win.
One thing was certain. If we fought a conventional campaign then we would conventionally lose. It was Churchill who said of Austen Chamberlain: ‘He always played the game and he always lost.’ We had to ensure that we did not just play the game.
The forces lined up against us were formidable.
Although we had drawn up spending rules to attempt to equalise the playing field, we would be heavily outspent during the campaign. The financial imbalance was partially corrected by the serendipity of Chris and Colin Weir winning the Euromillions lottery jackpot in 2011. The Weirs, longstanding and principled nationalists and also among the nicest people in the country, could be relied upon to help redress the imbalance.
The role of Chris and Colin in facing down the unpleasant media attacks on them is worthy of the highest praise. In the looking-glass world of the old written media it is fair game to attack two ordinary Scots who invest part of their fortune in the future of their country while turning a ‘Nelson’s eye’ to those London-based big business and financial interests who bankrolled the NO campaign. If campaign donations had been restricted, as they should have been, to those on the electoral roll of Scotland, the NO side would have been struggling to finance their own taxi fares.
This old press were almost entirely lined up on the NO side. In 2007 the SNP famously won an election with both of the main tabloids vying with each other to denounce the party. But we won that election with 33 per cent of the vote. To win the referendum we required 50 per cent plus one.
The ability of the press to determine elections has declined even since 2007, but there is a difficulty when it runs against you as a solid phalanx. It determines the media agenda, which has a follow-on impact on broadcasting, a medium that does still influence votes.
The full machinery of the British state was lined up against us. The three main Westminster parties would unite to see off the challenge with their own separate agendas. Luckily, each was vying with the other in a race to be the most unpopular, and the prestige of the Westminster system was at an all-time low. The very unity of the NO campaign was a disadvantage: the image of London Labour high-fiving the London Tory Party was a massive turn-off to Labour voters in Scotland. It still is.
This left social media and grassroots campaigning as areas where we had to excel. We needed to encourage the growth of a myriad of individuals and campaign groups who would be diverse, and therefore unregimented, but would also contribute to the overall campaign. We had to let a thousand flowers bloom.
In addition, many influential and progressive organisations in Scottish society were favourable to the YES campaign and were looking increasingly to Holyrood and not Westminster for their political objectives. The third sector in Scotland was either neutral or, by majority, supportive, given the experience of seven years of SNP government, and the trade union movement was fundamentally unhappy with the NO’s Better Together campaign and was becoming increasingly sympathetic to our cause.
And so the picture, after the signing of the Edinburgh Agreement in the latter part of 2012, was not as bleak as it might have at first appeared. The key to progress was always to be on the positive side of the argument. The referendum question – Should Scotland be an independent country? – gave us that firm platform. It is simply not possible to enthuse people on a negative.