Scotland

Friday

Freddy Gray

Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the Constitutional Crisis

We all know the referendum is a big deal, but what can we actually say? None of us has much of an idea how the constitution might change after Thursday's vote. Yet all of us want to talk knowledgeably about it and sound as if we really care. Here, then, is a primer for the uninitiated. Follow it closely and you should be able to skate your way through any discussion about the future of 'our union', at least until September 18. 'Yes or No, Britain will never be the same again' This remark sets you up as someone who comprehends the magnitude of what is happening and has the advantage of being infallible, for now. Don't explain what you mean. Leave an ominous pause so that others have to pick up where you left off.

James Forsyth

A new poll shows the Scots referendum is going right to the wire

ICM’s poll has ‘no’ ahead, but only just– it's 51-49. The ICM poll is a telephone one so both phone and internet polls are now showing ‘no’ narrowly ahead but the race too close to call. Adding to the unpredictably of the contest is that ICM found that 17 per cent of voters remain undecided – ‘no’ is on 42 per cent when they are included. Also no one is quite sure of what effect the far higher turnout (87 per cent of respondents said they are absolutely certain to vote) will have. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/SxP3I/index.html"] Being up here in Edinburgh you can’t help but notice how engaged people are with this referendum.

Thursday

Daniel Jackson

How independence will impoverish Scottish culture

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union" startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]An explosion of confetti will greet the announcement of Scottish independence. This isn’t another one of Alex Salmond’s fanciful promises, but an installation by a visual artist named Ellie Harrison. She wants Scotland to become a socialist republic. She has placed four confetti cannons in Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery. They will only be fired in the event of a Yes vote. Most artists in Scotland favour independence. Harrison’s installation is typical of the pretentious agitprop they produce. This isn’t a uniquely Scottish problem.

The Spectator

One week to save Britain

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union" startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]Next week, the most important vote in recent British history will be held. Indeed, it may well turn out to be one of the last ballots in British history. Seven months ago, this magazine devoted its front page to warning that the United Kingdom was at grave risk of dissolution. The unionist apparatus had decayed, argued Alex Massie, and Alex Salmond was the best late-stage campaigner in Europe. The SNP deployed the language of nationhood and destiny, while the ‘no’ campaign droned on about the Barnett Formula. The conditions for calamity were in place.

James Forsyth

Unionists must prepare for a second vote on Scottish independence

Tonight will bring another YouGov poll on the Scottish referendum and this may change the mood again. But right now, the pro-Union side is in far better cheer than it was. It feels that it has not only held the line in the last few days but begun to turn the tables on Salmond. There is a sense in the No camp that they have disrupted Alex Salmond’s momentum and prevented him from turning the final week of the campaign into a procession towards independence. They feel that the economic warnings from various business mean that the consequences of the choice are becoming more apparent. While the promise of a quick move towards further devolution has shown that the choice isn’t between things staying as they are and independence.

The Spectator

Podcast: Stay with us, Scotland!

With only seven days to go until the referendum, urgent action is needed to help save the Union. In this week’s issue, we asked Spectator readers to write to Scottish voters, saying why they are hoping for a ‘No’ vote. The response was extraordinary. You can read some of the letters here. Fraser Nelson is joined by Tom Holland and Leah McLaren to discuss what else can be done to save the Union at this late stage. They also take a look at Canada and Quebec, and how their union managed to survive not one but two referendums. It’s safe to say that Westminster has gone into full panic mode. If a ‘Yes’ vote passes, Cameron and Miliband’s jobs could both be on the line. But how should they respond to the threat of the country breaking up?

Sean Thomas

Countries shape character (so get ready to like Scots less)

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union" startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]As I write this, I am sitting outside a weinhaus in Kaub, a half-timbered town on the wooded slopes of the middle Rhine. If you don’t know the place, I recommend a visit: the scenery is lovely, the hiking is fine, and the Riesling is great (they have to handpick the grapes, like peasants in a Brueghel painting, because the river-ine vineyards are too steep for machines). But there is another reason to make the agreeable journey to Kaub: it’s a brilliant place to contemplate the mysteries of nationalism and national character — i.e.

Lloyd Evans

Can the Scots really be as small-minded, mistrustful and chippy as Spoiling suggests?

Referendum fever reaches Stratford East. Spoiling, by John McCann, takes us into the corridors of power in Holyrood shortly after a triumphant Yes vote. We meet a foul-mouthed bruiser named Fiona whose strident views and vivid language have propelled her into the public eye during the referendum battle. Her reward is Scotland’s foreign ministry. The most obvious and striking thing about Fiona is her personal ghastliness. A coarse, petulant show-off, over-endowed with self-belief, she has no wit, geniality or political intelligence. Asked how she feels about the birth of Scotland’s liberty, she rasps out her reply like a seagull with tonsilitis. ‘Rebirth!’ Her mistrust of Westminster is deeply engrained.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

New poll puts No ahead in the Scottish referendum campaign

Tonight brings the first morale boost for the No campaign in a wee while, a Daily Record poll has them 53-47 ahead. Including don’t knows, the numbers are No 47.6%, Yes 42.4% and don’t know 9.9%. A while back, a 53-47 poll would have been regarded as alarming by the No camp. But a week is a long time in politics and tonight’s numbers will be seen as a reassuring sign that a Salmond victory is not inevitable and that independence doesn’t have unstoppable momentum. Particularly reassuring for the No side is that the number of Labour voters backing independence has fallen, which suggests that the bleeding on that front has been staunched. We’ll have to see what the polling effect, if any, is of the visit from the three UK party leaders is.

Steerpike

Missing: One Secretary of State for Scotland

Don’t they know there's a war on? Given that the government has finally woken up to the very real threat of a ‘yes’ victory, Mr S was rather surprised to hear where the Secretary of State for Scotland has been. Spies report that Alistair Carmichael spent the day in London yesterday. Presumably someone had to be in charge of handing out the Saltires. Witnesses reported him ‘loafing’ around Portcullis House, and he was even papped popping out for a casual coffee: I'm not quite sure what Alistair Carmichael Scotlands Sec found so funny this morning maybe Cameron losing the Union! pic.twitter.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Why I am voting No

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3" title="Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union" startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]Once upon a time, a long while ago, I lived in Dublin. It was a time when everything seemed possible and not just because I was younger then. The country was stirring too. When I arrived it was still the case that a visa to work in the United States was just about the most valuable possession any young Irishman or woman could own; within a fistful of years that was no longer the case. Ireland was changing. These were the years in which the Celtic Tiger was born. They were happy years of surprising possibility. Years later I lived in the United States and my perspective changed.

James Forsyth

Cameron, Clegg and Miliband head to Scotland to make the case for the Union

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are combining forces and heading to Scotland tomorrow to make the case for the UK. Here's their joint statement: 'There is a lot that divides us - but there's one thing on which we agree passionately: the United Kingdom is better together. That’s why all of us are agreed the right place for us to be tomorrow is in Scotland, not at Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster. We want to be listening and talking to voters about the huge choice they face. Our message to the Scottish people will be simple: "We want you to stay."' The presence of the three party leaders is meant to show that Westminster will deliver on its promises about further devolution to Scotland.

Fraser Nelson

Devolution has given power to politicians, not people. Independence won’t change that

Gordon Brown has spoken, and the unionist parties are in agreement: if there’s a ‘no’ vote then more powers will be given – we’re told – ‘to Scotland’. There’ll be another commission and another Scotland Act. This so-called Devo Max should have been offered six months ago; to offer it in the last few days of the campaign smacks of panic. By moving more towards Salmond’s territory, the unionists conceded the premise: that more powers to the Edinburgh political elite is somehow the same as more powers to ‘Scotland’. And who could be against more power to Scotland? Not a single party, it seems, is questioning the premise: that the more the MSPs get up to, the better for Scotland.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Join The Spectator’s campaign to save Britain (and write our next cover story)

We’ve had an extraordinary response to our request for emails saying why you hope that Scotland votes to stay, and to keep our country united. So many that we’ll put this on the cover – it will be the first cover piece written by readers, not journalists. And we need more! So please, email me at editor@spectator.co.uk with why you’d like Scots to stay. People power can save the union. Alex Salmond is very good at defining England as an elite, and making out as if the rest of the UK is indifferent to the survival of Britain. He’s very good at portraying his opponent as being one, big, posh political elite.

Sunday

James Forsyth

People power can save the Union

If Scotland does vote for separation—as the latest YouGov poll suggests it will, we’ll enter the most unpredictable political period in living memory. But before we start contemplating the consequences of a Yes vote, it is worth thinking about what is giving independence momentum in Scotland. It is not just being driven by nationalist fervour but by the same anti-politics sentiment that is riling politics right across the United Kingdom. Voters who are fed up with Westminster and disappointed by politics are seeing voting Yes as a chance to rip up the whole system and start again. Breaking up the United Kingdom is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of anti-politics.

Alex Massie

Come in Britain, your time is up

How do you kill an idea? That is the Unionist quandary this weekend. For a long time now the Better Together campaign has based its hostility to Scottish independence on the risks and uncertainties that, unavoidably, come with independence. This, they say, is what tests well with their focus groups. No-one gives a stuff about all that identity crap, they say, so there's no need to talk about it. Instead, hype the unknowns - of both the known and unknown variety - and bang on and on about all that risk and all that uncertainty. Which, like, is fine. Until the point it ceases to be fine. Until the point at which it stops working. Which, like, would be right about now. YouGov's previous poll was an Oh fuck moment for Unionists.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The irresponsibility of Andy Burnham

Nothing matters more in British politics right now than keeping the country together. The polls in Scotland show that no one can be complacent about the result on the 18th of September. One thing that has helped the Nationalists to close the gap in Scotland is a serious of alarmist predictions about the NHS. They have seized on some of Andy Burnham’s overblown rhetoric to claim that the NHS south of the border is about to be privatised and that this will have a knock-on effect on Scotland. Given this, a period of silence on Mr Burnham’s part until after the referendum would be most welcome.

Fraser Nelson

Spectator appeal: tell Scots why they should stay, and why Britain is worth saving

It’s extraordinary to think that we could be 12 days away from the destruction of our country. The union of Scotland and England, perhaps the most successful and consequential alliance in history, could be ended – and for the worst of reasons. The Scottish National Party has been campaigning hard, and campaigning well. Alex Salmond has excelled in depicting his enemy as a cold-hearted England whose values are so irreconcilable with those of Scotland that the only answer is the partition of (and, ergo, the end of) Britain As a Scot with three English children, I loathe this agenda more than I can say. But it has been a mistake, in retrospect, for unionists to believe that the nationalist arguments are too bizarre or implausible to succeed.

Friday

Ed West

Scotland won’t become a foreign country just because of a vote

Hugo Rifkind had an interesting piece in the Times yesterday on the Scottish referendum arguing that the No campaign, by focussing on economics and pragmatism (where they obviously have the edge), had totally conceded the realm of emotion and attachment. Yet Rifkind, coming south in his twenties to settle in London, had found that England was his home, too, and ends his article explaining why Britain is indeed one country. The whole No campaign seems devoid of any idea of British patriotism, indeed barely mentions the B-word in its literature, instead approaching the thing like an unhappy spouse weighing up the costs of sticking with it or leaving to end up poorer.

Thursday

Digby Warde-Aldam

Paul McCartney telling me to vote No makes me want to vote Yes

‘Scotland, stay with us!’ David Bowie declared back in February. And what Bowie says (or doesn’t, quite – attentive readers will remember that he got Kate Moss to say it for him) others parrot. A few days ago, Sir Paul ‘Macca’ McCartney added his name to an open letter urging the people of Scotland to join the Bowie bandwagon. He was late to the party - the other signatories make up a bizarre (and almost entirely English) cross-section of the British entertainment establishment, from Simon Cowell to David Starkey to Cliff Richard. An impressive love-in, then. But it begs the question: will it actually swing any votes? As a young-ish Anglo-Scot living in London, I am completely unqualified to tell you.