Think of a number you don't know

My youngest son, who is 16, was voting for the first time in this referendum. He was really interested in the issues and often asked me what I thought about this or that. As a parent you have to walk a fine line between, on the one hand, passing on some of the stuff you have learned and believe to be true and, on the other, avoiding dumping your prejudices on an impressionable young person. Just because I’m a jaded old fart doesn’t mean that I want my son to believe everything that I do. I earned my degree in scepticism through age and experience, but I certainly wouldn’t wish to deny my boy his right to youthful idealism. Whenever we talk about stuff, I do my best to point out both sides in an argument and encourage him to make up his own mind, rather than take his old man’s word for it.      

In the last few days of the campaign, with the country seemingly at fever pitch, some of his friends posted pictures and videos from a ‘Yes’ rally in the centre of Glasgow. He was obviously excited by these events, intoxicated by the overwhelming positivity and sheer sense of occasion. Scotland, it seemed, was on the verge of something momentous. “Wow” he said, “look at the number of people who are in George Square.” There were a few things I thought of saying at that point, but I settled for posing him what seemed like a slightly abstract question. “That’s impressive” I said, “but how many folk aren’t there?” I wanted him to understand that impressions, opinions and moods are formed through how we respond to the information we choose to absorb. If that information comes from only one or two sources, our view of the big picture is likely to be incomplete. Without wishing to come over all Donald Rumsfeld, I wanted my son to be aware that, in every situation, there are things you think you know, things you know you don’t know and, sometimes, things you don’t know that you don’t know. There were lots of excited and committed folk in the square, celebrating their common cause, but elections are not necessarily won by the people who take to the streets. The numbers registered for this referendum were well in advance of anything witnessed at recent elections, but what did we know about all of these ‘new’ people who had never voted before? And, more to the point, what did we not know about them? 

It seemed to me that the people who favoured Yes were generally quite happy to let you know about it; they certainly outnumbered the people who were willing to state a preference for No. But lots of folk were keeping conspicuously quiet about the referendum. It was clear that not everyone was being swept up in that seemingly unstoppable tide of momentum. As the campaign built to a climax, I concluded that many of the folk who were playing their cards close to their chest were likely to be No voters. I pointed out some time ago that the Yes campaign had gambled with their ‘No Tories in Scotland’ policy. It seemed to give out a clear signal that a certain section of the electorate (i.e. disaffected Labour) was being targeted and that another section was being told that their votes would not be required. I understand why the Yes team felt that they had to take that gamble; they simply could not have captured that disaffected Labour vote by also attempting to woo big and small ‘c’ conservatives. But the picture they based this calculation on was only focused on the things that they knew. 

The Yes team knew that 16.7% of the Scottish electorate was willing to vote Conservative at the last General Election. What they perhaps hadn’t considered was the fact that these people consistently voted Conservative in the full knowledge that, in a 'first-past-the-post' system, they had absolutely no chance of winning. That’s quite a significant statement to make, one that should perhaps have made the Yes team consider the possibility that even more people might have voted Conservative if they felt they had a chance of getting representation. And what the Yes team didn’t know they didn’t know was just how many of those newly-registered referendum voters might naturally be inclined to take a conservative (small c) option on such a contentious issue as the break-up of the United Kingdom.

The fall-out from the Thatcher years has encouraged some people to take it as an article of faith that Scotland has an inbuilt left-leaning majority. Many seem to have forgotten that the Conservatives are the only party ever to have won a majority vote in Scotland in a general election. The country may have changed a lot since 1955, but not to the degree that the Conservatives have been wiped from the political map. Admitting to being a Conservative in Scotland is viewed by some as akin to admitting to being a child molester, but some traditional ‘conservative’ values (hard work, self-reliance, financial prudence) are actually held by many Scottish people. The perception that conservatism is a toxic brand may be true when it comes to public declarations of political allegiance, but it can hardly be described as electorally toxic when the Tories -in spite of everything- consistently poll similar numbers to the LibDems. In private, many folk hold ‘small c’ conservative views, so the Yes team was not only writing off the votes of that committed 16.7% of the electorate (412,855 people); it was writing off the votes of an unspecifiable number of people who: 

a) may have been inclined to espouse conservative values 

and b) may have been incentivised by the prospect that their vote, for once, might actually make a difference in Scotland.   

The Yes team couldn’t possibly have known what that number was, but they appear to have overlooked the possibility that it might have been quite big. As it turns out, the number was big enough for Yes to lose in 28 out of 32 Scottish local authorities. The more voters that turned out, the more likely they were to vote No; of the 24 regions with the biggest turnouts, 23 of them voted against independence. The two regions with the lowest turnouts –Glasgow and Dundee- both went to Yes.     

The referendum process excited my son and made him think about lots of things. He’s a wiser and more politically engaged person now than he was a month or two ago. He understood what I meant by that question about how many folk weren’t at the demonstration. He understands that forming a political view isn’t about re-tweeting one-liners from acerbic comedians or posting links to propaganda sites. He understands that the world is more complicated than some folk would have us believe. He understands that it’s not only worth giving a bit of thought to things that he hadn’t previously considered, it’s also worth considering the possibility that there are things he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know.

Scotland is going to be just fine if his generation grow up understanding that when people say something is a ‘no brainer’, it usually means the exact opposite.

Let's not fall out over this

On a night out in Glasgow a couple of months ago, a friend-of-a-friend threatened to hit me because he perceived that my views on Scottish independence were somewhat at odds with his own. By 'somewhat at odds' I mean that I told him that I was undecided about how to vote in the referendum and presented some aspects of what I would regard as the case against independence (there are, of course, good arguments in favour of it, but since this chap was already making some of them quite forcibly, I felt obliged to present an alternative view). Sadly, my equivocation on this matter seemed to offend his braveheart sensibilities to the extent that he felt the best way to ‘win’ the ‘debate’ was to threaten violence. Yes, I mean actual physical violence. And this was an educated man in his forties. I was reminded of that old PG Wodehouse line about it not being difficult to tell the difference between a little ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grievance.

Now, I understand that this fellow's reaction was more about his personal issues than about his politics, but I do find this episode depressingly symptomatic of some of the grislier aspects of the referendum debate. You’ll often get the same kind of response (albeit without the threat of physical violence) on internet discussion boards if you express doubts about some aspect or other of the post-referendum Utopia envisaged by Yes campaigners. It’s as if people don’t want to hear the counter arguments and would rather shut the debate down when the ball isn’t rolling their way. The debate, such as it is, appears to have taken on some of the characteristics one would normally associate with discussions about religious faith, where the most important thing is not to win the argument; the most important thing is to have faith, because your faith that Scotland will be better off after a 'yes' vote over-rides any questions or doubts.

The SNP’s white paper set out a vision for Scotland as a modern, low tax, small-government, business-friendly wee country. But at the same time, it said that we're also going to retire earlier, have bigger pensions and have a bigger welfare blanket within a public sector-driven economy. Nobody has satisfactorily explained how that can possibly work. Is it that unreasonable to ask how the new Scotland is going to be able to ignore economic rules that apply to every other country? All of those questions about passports, jobs, currency, embassies etc. have to be addressed. It simply isn’t good enough to expect us to vote first and worry about the details later.
The No campaign, by way of contrast, tends to fall back on the "we’re all doomed!" line of argument, which is just as abject. We won’t get into the EU! We won’t have a proper currency! We’ll go bankrupt once the oil runs out! Businesses will flee in droves! There would clearly be hurdles to overcome, but I find it hard to believe that an independent Scotland couldn’t be made to work, one way or another. But before I commit, I’d like to have a clearer picture of what kind of country I’ll be living in after a 'yes' vote. Will it be significantly different to the one we live in now? Will we better off? How do we quantify the ways in which we will be better off? Will my children and their children and their children’s children be better off?

The overall standard of debate has been poor and both sides really need to up their game, but there is one crucial difference between the Yes and No campaigns. The ballot paper will be quite clear; come September 18th, we’ll have the option of independence or the status quo. The Yes team makes a lot of noise about their opponents not having a plan, but the truth is that the No campaign doesn’t need a plan, beyond pointing out the various downsides of breaking a 300-year old arrangement. A 'no' vote (or an abstention) is a vote for the status quo. And, all things being equal, the status quo will prevail if people think that change might make them worse off than they are just now. The onus, therefore, is almost entirely on the Yes campaign to convince the electorate that Scotland will be better off making that change.

In some ways, Mr Salmond is as cunning as a fox wi’ two heids, but he does give the impression that not only does he want us to vote for independence, he’d also like a say in how the rest of the UK gets to respond to that vote. It would be more dignified to accept that, if Scotland votes to break up the union, we’ll have made our bed and what’s left of the UK will then make whichever decisions it thinks are in its best interests. That ‘reduced’ UK will have no requirement to take into account anything that Scotland would like or wish for. And why should it? Former members of a club don’t get to have a say on what goes on in that club once they have left. The Yes team should stop making accusations about bullying and just stick to answering the questions. Apart from anything else, do we really want our country to be led by the kind of people who cry ‘bully’ when arguments don’t go their way?
And yes, I know that voting for independence is not the same as voting to be governed by the SNP, but since Mr Salmond is the sine qua non of the Yes campaign, it is not unreasonable to focus on his pronouncements. He needs to be able to address -and not just deflect- concerns that his version of independence looks a bit like a teenager choosing to leave home, but reserving the right to go back to mum and dad’s for meals, to get some washing done and maybe also tell them what they can watch on the telly.

I hope that we can keep this referendum focused on ideas and not on emotions because, whatever the outcome of the vote, we’ll all still be here on the morning after. So let’s acknowledge that we all care about the kind of country our children and grandchildren grow up in. Let’s appreciate that two people can review the same information yet reach entirely different conclusions.

And let’s agree not to hit each other if we don’t see eye to eye about the best way forward for our country.