If only the Leave leadership were not such loonies

THAT’S the thing about proverbs, they just keep resonating because we know that there’s something truthful at the heart of them. Take this one: ‘You can tell a man by the company he keeps.’ It is a fairly canny piece of advice, but I would suggest it is also a pretty fair assessment of one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Brexit campaign. (The other big weakness also comes in proverb form, but more of that later).

Just take a look at the people who lined up last week in Scotland to call for Britain’s exit from the EU; they are such a suspect bunch it is a wonder that anyone wants to keep their company or, more pertinently, vote for what they believe in.

There was Jim Sillars, one-time deputy leader of the SNP, now a hard-line socialist and nationalist who has fallen out with just about everybody in politics during his career.

There was Nigel Griffiths, a former Labour MP who left the Commons in disgrace after being unable to resist the charms of a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Then, of course, there was David Coburn, Scotland’s only Ukip elected representative who comes out with more drivel (usually about women and toasters) then every other politician in Scotland put together.

There was also Tom Harris, another former Labour MP, who, to be fair, is the most normal of the lot – but even when he was a parliamentarian, he was better known for his outpourings on social media than anything else.

It is not as if this slightly dubious array of talent is any better in the national campaign, where Ukip’s divisive and irascible leader Nigel Farage can be found rubbing shoulders with George Galloway, the hard-Left political celebrity best known for pretending to be a cat in a leotard.

This is a weakness, a big weakness, because this oddball mixture of attention-seeking hasbeens, eccentric egotists and reactionary hardliners makes the whole anti-EU campaign look decidedly loopy.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that faced with this lot on one side and every serious politician from every mainstream political party on the other, most Scots have chosen to side with the Remain camp.

But the frustrating thing for the Leave camp is that, underneath the cartoon leadership, they do have some interesting and coherent arguments to deploy.

They are right to needle away at the hundreds of millions of pounds Britain sends every week to Brussels. They are right to raise concerns about unhindered migration because people really do worry about that.

They are also right that Scotland would have greater control over fisheries and agriculture and could close the loophole which allows European students to study here free.

ALL these arguments are starting to resonate, despite, not because of, the strange collection of political caricatures leading the campaign. Indeed, such is the sense of general wariness about Europe that the Leave campaign is on the verge of challenging the two big assumptions that the political establishment keeps making about the referendum in Scotland.

The first is that Scots will vote in overwhelming numbers to remain in the EU; and the second is that if Scots vote to Remain and the UK votes to Leave, then there will automatically be another independence referendum and Scotland will leave the UK.

The first assumption is going to be challenged because there is every chance that the Leave vote will increase over the next two months from the 35 per cent base it has now. But also, more importantly, because turnout for the EU referendum is not going to get anywhere near the 85 per cent who voted in 2014.

If turnout is low, this will favour the Leave side because its supporters, having made the decision to get Britain out of the EU, will be more motivated to come out to vote.

This could see the Leave vote in Scotland pushed up to 40 per cent or more – at which point the result across the whole of the UK will be up for grabs.

Second, if the final vote in Scotland is tight – say 55-45 in favour of Remain – then that would not give Nicola Sturgeon the definitive mandate to demand the fresh indyref her supporters want. Such a result would only reveal that Scotland is bitterly divided on Europe. It would not show Scotland to be the overwhelmingly Euro-friendly place Miss Sturgeon claims it is; and it would most certainly not give her the base she needs to launch a new independence referendum with any confidence of success.

Yet even with all these factors edging the Leave camp forward, everyone involved knows that its chances of success north of the Border are really quite slim.

They know this is where the second proverb comes in: ‘Always keep a hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse.’

This sums up the instinct most people have to go with what they are comfortable with rather than risk the unknown. It identifies the basic advantage that all sides supporting the status quo have during referendum campaigns.

Those working behind the scenes in the Leave camp in Scotland are very aware of their weaknesses. They also know they can’t do much about either the instinctive caution of the electorate or their hopeless leadership.

But it has left some of them wondering what they could achieve if they actually had the sort of proper, balanced, sensible leadership their opponents have. That would indeed make this a very different contest.