I won’t say Nicola has to give up... but she has to know we are a nation divided
THE best of politicians, the ones who last and make their mark, are those who don’t just want to stay ahead of the curve but who draw their own curve. The Thatchers, the Blairs, the Macmillans.
Thinkers who didn’t just respond to the public mood but anticipated it. Shaped it. Saw the next big thing and owned it before anyone else.
Let me suggest what the next big thing in Scottish politics should be. Reconciliation.
While we were told that the 2014 independence referendum was a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity, it would appear it was not. The losers want a replay. I can understand their frustration and would share it if I had lost.
In the innocence of those pre-referendum days I remember having a pint with a mate of mine who was voting differently from me.
We clinked glasses 24 hours before the vote and agreed whatever the result we would just knuckle down and do our best for our country. We still meet and are equally perplexed by the fact our country appears incapable of moving on. It is time we did.
I am not suggesting those who have sincerely devoted their lives to independence should just give up. That the day after the referendum they should just have shaken hands, said well played and moved on.
I respect their convictions, however much I think their thinking is flawed. But we need to escape groundhog day. Respect the decision and accept something more.
This is our country we are talking about and while we all love it, want to improve it, none of us owns it.
We are a nation divided. Polling shows that if there were another referendum the result would be the same. If anything, opinions are hardening. Working on the campaign in 2014, roughly 40 per cent of people were committed to the Union, 30 per cent to independence and 30 per cent up for persuasion. Now I understand the persuadables are down to just 6 per cent. Battle lines are hardening.
The real choice now is not independence or the Union, it is to continue a war of attrition or to progress as a society. How to achieve a united Scotland. There are those who for pelf or preferment will tell you independence is inevitable. I would join them for nothing if they could tell me how one child would be raised out of poverty as a result, one pensioner blessed with serenity, one job created, if we were to leave the UK.
The argument that to criticise our public services is to undermine our ‘Scottishness’ is increasingly threadbare. It is actually holding Scotland back.
I am not suggesting that anyone who believes in independence should abandon their beliefs, but that they should look at what is happening to the country they believe they are championing.
Our schools are failing, our hospitals are poor, we don’t prosecute criminals as we once did and our economy is tanking. Putting a Saltire on it makes it no better.
We need something better and that means being honest. While I do not believe in independence I also do not believe that those who do are inevitably incompetent. Yet in the current climate, to point out incompetence in our government is dismissed as merely opposition to independence.
It is time for Scottish Nationalists to rethink their case and try to persuade us, not berate us.
They seem to think Brexit is their Willy Wonka Golden Ticket to independence without thinking it through. If leaving a community of nations where sovereignty is shared is such a bad idea, why would you do it again by leaving the UK?
But it is also time for those of us who believe in Scotland, and its place in the UK, to accept that we are not the only ones who believe in this country.
Our politics is stale. One-paced. I think Nicola Sturgeon was right when she said there wouldn’t be another referendum until support for her side was consistently at 60 per cent.
BUT in a country that will tell you we champion equal rights she was bullied out of that position by a middleaged man in Alex Salmond. I’m unlikely to give up my belief in the Union – although I would listen to an argument properly put.
I am not asking Nationalists to give up their cause – but to listen to an argument properly put. At the moment we hear neither. It is time we accepted we are a nation divided and tried to reconcile. The SNP seem to be less concerned with building a nation and more obsessed with winning a national by-election in Indyref 2.
They won’t call it because they know they won’t win it. So let’s park the idea. Let’s stop living the pretence and get real.
There is, after all, more that unites us than divides us.