1 September 2014

Carebear Unionism


"We stand here in Glasgow tonight, some 300 years after the commissioners of Scotland and England gathered, to forge the Union which we now call home. As history has taught us, it was a marriage not of love perhaps, but as our Union has gained wrinkles and generations, our people prospering and weathering hard times together, that love has grown. We have become a family. We may not always agree - few families do - but we stand by one another, through thick and thin. 

Ours is a complex history, marked by its glories and its disgraces, its black days and its quiet successes. Much has changed since Britain painted the map red, much for the better. The past shrinks from us, but all around us, we see its inheritances. Together, we built the National Health Service, devoted to the principle that nobody - nobody - should be abandoned alone to the scourge of ill-health. I will defend that principle to my last breath. If we turn our eyes upwards, in the great cities of this country, we see the wages of Empire in bricks and mortar, often unjustly gained, but a permanent, standing reminder of our past. We should not try - we cannot - avoid or ignore our shared history. But we can always do better. Tomorrow, and the day after, we must always strive to do better.

I understand, many of us are not happy with the status quo. I am not happy with the status quo. But we can do better, not just for Scotland, but for all of the people in these islands. Many Scots want more self-government within the Union, want to take more of the big choices about their lives. I share that conviction, and will strive with every sinew of my being to ensure that the parliament of this country has the powers it needs to transform this country for the better. To foster work - good jobs - for our struggling children, who have suffered more than anyone in these hard times. To end the scourge of poverty. To clear the shelves and slam shut the foodbank door, and ensure that every family, every child in this country, can sleep soundly, bellies full, in dignity.  

The SNP say that Britain's ability to re-invent itself is spent. I can't share that pessimism. Devolution, human rights, democracy: our history shows us that united, we can change the world -- if there are people to  fight for it. Scots: stand and fight with me. Fight for a better, more just, fairer Union. The project we begin together on the 18th of September can sweep this country, from coast to coast, transforming lives, blasting open the doors of opportunity, reshaping and remoulding this country into a more perfect union. As he speaks tonight, there is much in Alex Salmond's vision of independence which I agree with. Many are values that, as a Labour politician, I share. But what I cannot share is his pessimism, his lack of ambition for this country. I haven't given up on our friends and neighbours in England and Wales and Northern Ireland - and neither should you.

Many of you will look at Britain as you see it today and think, we are on the wrong path. I share your passions. Let us strive together, here. Let us win the greater victory, not only for people in Glasgow, but for ordinary people across this country, in Manchester, Cardiff, Belfast. We are a rich nation, our people industrious, trying to live well, making the best future possible for their children, and ensuring dignity in old age for all those who have worked hard for what they've got.  Don't be pessimistic about that strength. This Union, this family of nations, this historic achievement: it is not lightly to be given away. I ask you to vote No, not for our past, but for our future. I ask you to vote No, not out of fear of independence, but out of ambition for what we can do together. Together, we can make this country better. It's time to link hands, not to say farewell. It's time to show faith in all of our citizens. Don't squander this opportunity. Vote No for a bolder future. Vote No for a Better Union."

This, give or take, was the sort of thing I was expecting Alistair Darling to say a week ago. Britain is a great country, a historic achievement - and it should be put away with a little dignity. I sat, waiting for Darling to find his lyricism, to remember a few verses of the auld sang that made the whole enterprise worthwhile. Answer came there none. Given a privileged platform before the nation, afforded an opportunity for the final word on why Scots should vote No on September the 18th, Darling fluffed it. He had no music in his soul for the Union, just a jabby array of gripes and unstrategically over-detailed indictments. Since the meltdown, however, a curious turn has taken over the No campaign: they seem to have given up on arguments. 

Jim Murphy is doing his darnedest to promote the idea that no reasoned argument is possible in Scotland - a laughable and transparent proposition, but again, one that says "there's no point debating this question." Today's thoughtful and detailed demotion of the Yes campaign took the form of a new poster campaign, transforming the case for the Union into sub-motherhood-and-apple-pie banalities, with the message: "we love our kids, we're saying no thanks" and "I love my family, I'm saying no thanks." Quite what affection for your weans has to do with how you vote, I haven't the foggiest, but this kind of brainless candyfloss campaigning says, "dinna fash about the detail, facts or arguments: if you love love, vote No." It is about as subtle as being brained by a Care Bear.

And under the cereal bowls and the dodgy gender politics, their #PatronisingBTLady ad is essentially a hymn to disengaged politics. Johann Lamont said that the advertisement is grand, because she's met folk like #PatronisingBTLady. I don't doubt it. So have I. But that's hardly the point. For all of their faults, and for all of my lack of native affection for the Better Together crew, they are clearly folk who believe in the process and meaningfulness of politics. They are interested in political ideas, interested in evidence, interested in argument. They believe - in a way I can't share - that there is a conclusive and reasoned argument to be made for voting No. But in their efforts to shore up their leaky campaign, they resort to none of these powerful tools. They don't even try to persuade you that you are Better Together in the Union, don't even try to persuade you that a Yes vote is risky.

Instead, we get the political advertising equivalent of pill popping. Undecided? Wavering? Why not just check out intellectually? Isn't it all awfully boring, complicated and disagreeable? Vote No to end your grief, without guilt. You love your weans don't you? I love my children too. Vote No. Your frontal lobes tenderised yet? Give that haverer another lick of the teddy. Get those braincells good and idle. For folk engaged in politics to produce such an advertisement, and to try to exploit them for a cause they believe in, is monstrous, dismal, and beyond cynical. If you can't win the argument? Just give up. Cry "Oh look, a squirrel."

This is the way Britannia (might) end: not with the bang it deserved, but a whimper.

13 comments :

  1. Sadly, this is the best positive case I've seen yet for the union...

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  2. The bit at the start comes closest to the much maligned "positive case for the Union" - if that had been Better Togethers premise from the start I must admit I would have had a much harder time voting Yes.

    As it is I am resigned that the No campaign merely shows "politics as usual". A grubby little game of bewildering and cajoling the electorate into voting for "your side" as opposed to any sort of agenda or manifesto for the kind of wide spread and sweeping democratic and social reforms the UK is crying out for.

    The No camp can say they couldn't commit to that sort of vision because they are a "Union" of disparate political entities. The No camp can say that "look some of us share those values" the problem is they are spread across all the parties and none shares all those values. Labour are committed to social justice, though I think they have taken a wrong turn somewhere as regards trying to achieve it, the Lib Dems are committed to democratic reforms and the Conservatives are… well currently they are falling apart over Europe but they at least usual have the redeeming feature of being reasonably "liberal" (too much economically mind) when they aren't pretending to be the party of law and order.

    The problem? None of these parties agree on improving society or democracy. The Libs don't agree with Labour, Labour don't agree with the Tories and so on and so forth.

    Indeed it occurs to me that Scottish Independence is a chance for the rUK left to reclaim Labour and the Lib Dems. Unite them to press for electoral reform at least. After all Labour will be terrified of endless Tory majorities (despite all the evidence to the contrary and that all they would need to get elected is a 1% swing).

    If we vote No the problems remain and the issues with sorting them remain.

    If we vote Yes then who knows? We can plow our own furrow and perhaps it will give UK politics an almighty kick up the arse and drag Westminster kicking and screaming I to the 21st century.

    Too optimistic? Maybe. But if we get a Yes vote I'll be in the lifeboat and inviting anyone who wants to escape to join us.

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    1. As you say, Keir, the critically problem with this peroration, however potentially beguiling it might have been, is that it is totally disconnected from a) the realities of the campaign, b) the current state of UK politics, c) Alistair Darling's credibility as its spokesman and d) has been totally unsupported by any of the other Better Together rhetoric over the last two years. Even if Darling had taken to his pins and said this or something like it, that gap would still have left the positive case for the union unfleshed out and lacking in credibility.

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  3. I agree that the Better Together campaign have utterly failed to grasp the scale of the political debate being waged in Scotland at the moment. I wrote a post on a related point: http://theyweewords.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-scottish-independence-referendum.html

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  4. Brilliant. But an even better case is made by the Oxbridge theological apologist for Empire, Nigel Biggar. Don't miss it at:

    http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4930/independence_will_do_nothing_for_scots

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    1. How curious. Rather enjoyed that (if only as a rare spot of colour, bright and strange).

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    2. Have to say read most of Nigel Biggar, written I imagine from far far away from the Scotland and the Alex Salmond I know. You may ask what gave it away, boarding school, most of my people have a rudimentary education which has been filled out after leaving school but we got it whilst living at home. It did not make me laugh more shake my head.
      As for the piece I wanted to comment on. Now wouldn't it have been refreshing if he had made that speech in the debate, but then he doesn't actually believe a word of it. The only thing which worries Alistair Darling is the loss of position he has fought like mad to obtain at Westminster plus the xxx's.

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  5. Can only hope the NOs steal your article to lend some dignity and political poise to their position....but I think it has probably come too late to help them out. They appear incapable of looking outside the Unionist propaganda engendered by their accountants and wildly spinning script writers.

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    1. Per my earlier comment to Keir above: it is definitely too late. I felt sure - 'cos it is what I'd have done - that we'd have seen the no campaign using the vaseline lens in some reasoned sense. Perhaps an advertisement, showing a Scottish granny with a gaggle of laughing grandweans, some with English accents, others Scots, all playing along together. Although that "I love love" ads vaguely gesture towards this idea - the official campaign has made nothing of it. Even the loving gestures of Dan Snow et al were, as I understand it, self-organised efforts of the concerned - not in any sense an orchestrated strategy from the official No campaign scout camp.

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  6. Nicely done (especially the pic) even if it really only exposes just how weak such an argument might be, given it rests on mythologies of destiny, dodgy heritage-mongering, and an allusion to a Nu-Unionism for which is no evidence.

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    1. Ibid. Darling's not the man to deliver this kind of message with conviction, I'd say - by dint of personality, the nature of his political career, etcetera, etcetera. If it was to be really effective, to my mind, it couldn't just be shouting warm slogans into the void - as it would be now, if Darling had said this or something like it in Kelvingrove last Monday. To really fly, it'd need sensitivity, depth and credibility - credibility which the No campaign have never tried to foster.

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  7. The NHS case is a no go area for BT/U-KOK/NT because firstly the NHS started in the Highlands and Islands and NHS Scotland has always been independent. 'We did not invent and support the NHS' Scotland invented it, not Nye Bevan and we built and run our own NHS. The real story is not a unionist one but Scots doing it for themselves and being slavishly copied by the English who then try and rewrite history to deny reality. The sad thing so many Scots went along with it that there are Scottish NHS workers who do not realise this.

    It's just one example of virtually all the Social Democratic buttons that cannot be pushed by the union side as either they are Scottish only or the SNP has stolen that thunder and we have Johann Lamont trying to out tough the Tories on welfare to make it an obvious lie that we are better together because of them.

    Now we have Jim 'chicken Spud' Murphy admitting free university tuition is not safe with Labour.

    No, they could never make that speech, not credibly. Credit for that must in part go to the genuinely Social Democratic SNP. I didn't even vote for them, to my shame.

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