Don’t count on PM returning to Project Fear

THE two words that scare the living daylights out of most Unionists are as follows: “Project Fear”.

This was the description given in 2014 to the Better Together campaign that defeated Alex Salmond’s attempts to break up Britain by pouring buckets of cold water over his economic plans.

Although ultimately successful, the slogan and its accompanying strategy were seen as something that should never be repeated as being entirely negative and therefore counterproductive. Thus, as we approach yet another referendum on Scottish independence, the last thing Unionist planners want is another Project Fear.

And so yesterday, we had a quietly spoken but impressively determined paean of praise from the Prime Minister about the benefits of Scotland being part of the United Kingdom.

In retelling the successes of the Union from the development of the steam engine, a partnership between an engineer from Greenock and a manufacturer from Birmingham, to the Harry Potter books, begun in a cafe in Edinburgh by an author from Gloucester, and on through world wars, she added in unabashed tones: “Ours is not a marriage of convenience, or a fair-weather friendship, but a true and enduring union, tested in adversity and found to be true.”

The strong emphasis she placed on the fact that Scotland is better inside the Union was a tacit acceptance that a new independence vote is on the way. Yet, it also signalled that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will find herself up against a Prime Minister of a different stamp to the one who fought in 2014.

Said Mrs May in her conclusion: “We are four nations, but at heart we are one people. Let us live up to that high ideal and let us never stop making loudly and clearly the positive, optimistic and passionate case for our precious union of nations and people.”

It’s a new way of fighting the separatists, and Project Fear it ain’t.