Analysis: Late date gives unionists a conference season platform

ON THE face of it, Saturday 18 October, 2014 looks like a sensible date for holding an independence referendum. The clocks will not yet have gone back, plunging the country into its midwinter gloom. Meanwhile, pride in Scotland and all it stands for should be at its height.

Just three weeks previously, the eyes of the world will have been on Gleneagles as it hosts the Ryder Cup. Meanwhile, during the summer, Scotland will have hosted and competed as a separate country in the Commonwealth Games, as well as celebrated the 700th anniversary of the defeat of the English at Bannockburn.

Yet on closer inspection, it does not look like a very good choice at all. Perhaps the most serious problem from Mr Salmond’s point of view is that much of the previous month will be have been occupied by the UK party conference season. One after the other each of the three unionist parties will have had their guaranteed week in the media sun.

It is inconceivable that, if the independence referendum were just about to take place, they would not use their platforms to trumpet their belief that Scotland should not go it alone.

True, the coincidence of the referendum campaign with the party conference party season might make it more difficult for the unionist parties to fight a joint campaign. But would Mr Salmond really want to be contending with the most widely publicised speeches that Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband make all year?

Meanwhile, October has potential disadvantages so far as registering people to vote is concerned. The procedure whereby voters who find they are not on the register or are registered at an out-of-date address can get themselves duly registered is normally suspended during the autumn. Anyone who has not got their name on the register by mid-August – as much as eight weeks before polling day – would not be able to vote in an October ballot.

October 18 will fall at the beginning or the end of many schoolchildren’s October break, a time when many a Scottish family take the chance to get away – and may well fail to ask for a postal vote.

Above all, irrespective of the time of the year, there is one obvious obstacle to a Saturday poll – the strong sabbatarian tradition in parts of the Western Isles. Votes there would not be counted until the following Monday. Would Mr Salmond really want to keep the country waiting that long?

• John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University.