Margo MacDonald: Forget the referendum, what we need are facts

Published on Wednesday 2 December 2009 08:40

THE First Minister looked nervous and tired at the launch of the white paper on the referendum, Your Scotland. Your Voice. But then he might have known something we didn't: that he'd bowed to the inevitable and put Fiona Hyslop out of her misery as the education minister and taken on a huge amount of work in unpicking the damage done by the mistaken pursuit of a referendum.

The white paper reported on the Government's Conversation and its promoting of a referendum – the official line. It seems to be a restatement of the entrenched positions of organisations and opinion-formers that make up civic Scotland – my initial impression.

But why split hairs? St Andrew's Day was about the referendum, the why, when and what now, of the promised exercise.

Certainly, that's what various broadcasting outlets asked me about when they contacted me from their London addresses. To say there's a gap of understanding between the journalists and opinion formers north and south of the Border is to say that Susan Boyle can hold a tune.

My first interview of the day was with a Shock Jock. I listened in to Glasgow MSP Pauline McNeil being interviewed before me as Labour's spokesperson on the constitution. She faithfully reported the party's reasons for opposing both a referendum and independence. But she completely threw the Shock Jock presenter when she mentioned that at some future date, it might suit Labour to have a referendum, but not right now. I was a bit puzzled myself, because it would appear that things won't get any better for Labour, and their best chance of knocking the idea of sovereignty on the head is to nip in quick before the SNP has made good its neglect of political information and education over the past decade.

But the Shock Jock obviously wasn't used to political discussion – he liked cheap, wide and shallow soundbites, and Pauline's earnest statements were a bit challenging for that time in the morning. So he cut to the chase: "What you Scots want" he challenged Pauline, "is for the English to keep subsidising you through the Barnett Formula, while you embarrass the rest of the country by letting murderers out of jail to go home to Libya!"

The line went silent. When Pauline got her breath back she managed a few mangled cheeps about having the legal right to free al-Megrahi, before being dismissed when the Shock Jock turned his charm on me. It's probably best to skip the first part of the interview, and instead recount the parting exchanges.

SJ: "You say most Scots don't really understand the powers they'd have under the different choices on offer in a referendum. Are they too thick? So we've just got to keep subsidising you?"

Me: "OK. You keep the Barnett Formula, and we'll keep the oil."

I comforted myself that the Shock Jock wasn't typical, and at least he hadn't committed the faux pas seen and heard in the Politics Programme when the production unit up from London made the most patronisingly immature short film, incorporating every Scottish clich that could be accessed at one location.

On the referendum white paper day, when the Scottish Government kept the promise it should never have made, and opposition parties scored a hollow victory when they promised the referendum won't take place, I became more convinced than ever that Alex Salmond's big mistake has been to assume that most Scots have the information they need in order to make an informed choice.

If the unexpected does happen, and one of the opposition parties agrees to back the SNP in return for its preferred scheme appearing on the referendum voting paper, I'd consider tabling an amendment that a referendum should be held sometime before the end of 2015. That is, after an information campaign to properly explain the different features of keeping the political union with the rest of the UK, and forging a new political relationship, that would allow Scotland the freedom to say "Yes" when it suited and "No" when necessary.

Day-to-day government could continue, while a bittersweet opportunity would grow, as we struggle out of recession, making the choice facing the Scots less theoretical.

The inescapable conclusion would be that inside the present union, Scotland's economic growth, and therefore standard of living, lags behind the successful GB regions; the recession hits Scotland harder, and for longer; and the damage done to our industry and business is more severe than elsewhere in the UK.

That's the reality of today's UK for Scotland. If the SNP, and a growing number of opinion-formers who realise the rules of global economics and politics have changed, cannot persuade Scots the best deal for Scotland is the sovereign power needed to operate a customised game-plan, the game's truly a bogey.