The Herald

A Union campaign should already be in place to defeat independen­ce

- RICHARD COOK

SHOULD there be another independen­ce referendum? Not for a generation, were you to believe a word the SNP says. But, as we all know, and you don’t have to be a Unionist to believe this, there’s no point in doing that.

It wasn’t “once in a generation” for the SNP: it’s every chance and every opportunit­y it can manufactur­e. That’s nationalis­m for you: it’s a paranoid monomania uninterest­ed in and incapable of anything other than its supreme goal. But what should Unionists do?

Well, while we should learn the lessons of the past and never give the Nationalis­ts a referendum as suits them, the prudent and responsibl­e thing to do is to plan. The thing we have to plan for is a better Better Together. Some of us came together in 2014 to form the Constituti­onal Research Council.

We don’t want to be the official pro-Union campaign in any second referendum but we do want to help fund the right campaign team and, even more importantl­y, see the right campaign fought.

We came to the view last year that Brexit would be good for the Union and correspond­ingly bad for nationalis­m. It made sense, therefore, to back Leave. We didn’t want to run our own Leave campaign any more than we want to run any second No campaign. So we decided to donate to one. Vote Leave had reached its donation cap (you couldn’t give them any more money because they couldn’t spend it) so we donated to the DUP so that they could run a Leave campaign of their own.

We’ve purposely avoided publicity up to now because, bluntly, we don’t want to be part of any media narrative that says a second referendum is inevitable, as in: “Look, even the Unionists are getting their act together.” However, now is the time to say that, just as a responsibl­e adult buys insurance for their house, car or anything else they value, we who value the Union need to pay our insurance money for it.

The first thing we believe a pro-Union campaign in Scotland should learn is the real lesson of 2014: campaign for the Union, not against independen­ce. The last thing we want our side to be is “Project Fear: The Refrighten­ing”. The public sees through that; just look at how Project Fear crashed and burned in the Brexit referendum. I am entirely convinced by those who argue that Project Fear actually suppressed the total potential pro-Union vote in 2014.

We need a better class of politics than that, not least because it’s tactically smarter too. Then there’s what Dan Snow did towards the end of independen­ce referendum campaign. Call it “softer” or more “cultural” but it should be inbuilt in all pro-Union campaignin­g. Our true strength is that we stand for something bigger and better than the narrow, cramped, inward vision of the SNP: and we should make the most of it.

A successful pro-Union campaignin­g body should already exist, be independen­t of the political parties and make the case for the Union in the rest of the UK too; not least so that the rest of the UK can remind us of how much we’re valued by them.

That point about the pro-Union campaign already needing to exist is, in our view, vital. The SNP isn’t some ad hoc thing wonkily pulled together for a referendum, with its splits and seams all too visible.

And nor should Unionism be. We should have fought the last referendum when it suited us; we should have had the team in place to do that; and if there is a next time, we should, as we’re more than capable of, win the referendum so that we really do settle this for a generation.

We need to get over to Scots that our place in the Union makes us a bigger place, whereas the Nationalis­ts’ vision is of a shrunken, isolated Scotland.

As a matter of profession­al technique, we hugely admire the way Theresa May is going about the Brexit negotiatio­ns. Her vision of a positive, outward-looking UK is exactly the tone we want for any pro-Union campaign in a second referendum.

Then there’s the how: we have to use the latest campaignin­g techniques and not rely on decrepit, factionrid­den party machines. Vote Leave showed us that it’s perfectly possible to run a campaign that can beat the parties.

And we know there are already good people such as Scotland in Union out there, doing some of what we think ought to be done. We just want to ensure that it’s done as well and as profession­ally as possible. The end of amateurism is now: the Union deserves nothing less than our best effort.

‘‘ The last thing we want our side to be is ‘Project Fear: The Refrighten­ing’. The public sees through that

Richard Cook is chairman of the Constituti­onal Research Council and a former vice-chairman of the Scottish Conservati­ve & Unionist Party.

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