Yes can’t see the irony as No voters show their steel
IRONY: do the leaders of Yes Scotland actually know what it means? I only ask because of what happened last week. First, a campaign spokesman accused Better Together of being funded by ‘billionaire bankers’ and wealthy fat cats – implying that the pro-independence campaign was a more balanced, grassroots effort bankrolled solely by honest workers of toil and the like.
But then, a day later, Yes Scotland announced, rather quietly it has to be said, that it had been given £1 million by bus tycoon Brian Souter.
Did the campaign’s leaders see the paradox in that? Well, if they did, they didn’t show it. But even more instructive than this irony-by-pass was the announcement from Better Together last week that it had enough money, thank you very much.
It thanked all those individuals who had sent in cash, particularly since the pivotal Darling versus Salmond debate, but it simply could not take any more small donations: its coffers were full.
This was very revealing, primarily because it showed we had two campaigns: one apparently funded largely by wealthy individuals and the other by a mass of small donations.
That is a generalisation, of course. Yes Scotland has received many small donations and Better Together has been given money by wealthy backers (JK Rowling for example) but Yes Scotland’s position does now look the least balanced of the two.
According to the latest official figures, Yes Scotland received a massive 86 per cent of its majordonation income in the first six months of this year from just one source: Ayrshire lottery winners Colin and Chris Weir.
Now, if you add the £1 million from Mr Souter, it leaves the nationalist group looking even less egalitarian than it did before.
In contrast, Better Together has received so many small donations that it has reached its limit and cannot accept any more.
But there is more to it than that. The flood of small donations, which has come pouring into the pro-Union camp, is symptomatic of a much bigger development in this campaign: the hardening of the No vote.
In the middle of last week I was at a one-man piano show at the Edinburgh fringe.
The (admittedly largely middle- aged) audience was looking to be entertained, yet even so, when the pianist broke off to mention the referendum, the word ‘independence’ was greeted with hisses, boos and angry disapproval.
It was immediately clear, not only that many members of the audience disliked the suggestion of politics, but they were reacting angrily, and almost instinctively, against the concept of independence.
I’ve noticed this trend in other ways, too.
For several weeks a Yes Scotland sticker has been visible half-way up a lamp-post near our house. Well, not any more.
Somebody has not just ripped it off they have written the following slogan in its place: ‘No UK, No £, Vote No’.
That was done by a vandal and I am in no way seeking to condone vandalism but what is undeniable is that this particular piece of graffiti was done by a politically-aware, economically-literate vandal – and there are not many of those where I live.
THESE may be small signs but I think that when they are taken together with the deluge in s mall donations received by Better Together over the last few weeks, it is clear that something is happening. For months – no, for years – the pro-Union vote in Scotland has been generally passive. It has been comfortable in the status quo and quietly quiescent about politics.
Well, not any more. At last, No voters are finding their voices and they are angry. In fact they now appear to be just as irate and passionate as the Yes supporters have been for years.
It has taken a long time but, at last, it seems that millions of Unionists have woken up to what they see as a major threat to the country they love.
They may not have been out campaigning, day in, day out, like their Yes Scotland counterparts, but they are now engaged.
They see the cliff edge and are desperate to bring their country back from it.
I was one of many commentators who believed that Yes Scotland had an inbuilt advantage simply because its supporters were the more motivated.
I firmly believed that the proindependence supporters were more likely to vote because, once they had embraced change, they would become almost evangelical about the decision they had made.
At the same time, those who simply wanted to keep the status quo would not be quite so enthused and might just stay at home.
Well, now I think the situation has changed. There are now many, many No supporters who feel fiercely, proudly determined to vote No and make sure all their friends and neighbours vote the same way.
These are the people who have been overwhelming Better Together with their cheques, their notes and coins; these are the people who bristle with rage at the very mention of the word independence and some of them have even taken to spelling out the logic of their opposition to independence on Edinburgh lamp-posts.
There is passion in this debate but it is no longer coming from the side of flags and freedom, Saltires and songs.
Indeed, there is something refreshingly ironic in the Bravehearts being out-passioned by the normally quiet, rational backers of the Union for once.
The irony is there, no doubt about that. But, given their history on irony, it is unlikely anybody in the Yes camp will ever see it.