Brian Monteith: Phoney war is over, now the real battle begins

After a period of political shadow boxing, or what has resembled the phoney war in 1939 – when some 110 divisions of the French and British armies chose not to engage with Germany’s 23 divisions along the Franco-German border – Alex Salmond will this week launch his independence campaign, forcing the kid gloves off and full engagement between both sides to commence.

By sweeping into Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, the Wehrmacht forced the Allies into a defensive battle of their choosing that they were ill-prepared and ill-suited to, and were it not for the combined forces of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, could have ended in complete and utter defeat.

The parallels are striking, for the unionist parties have long adopted a complacently defensive posture that is constantly being outflanked by the far more nimble and mobile tactics of the nationalists, just as the Allies did up until May 1940.

If arguments are tanks, then Salmond’s panzers have all the look of being able to push the unionists back, piercing through their old, lumbering clichés that resemble those overweight French tanks that were stuck in the mud and outmanoeuvred. Like the impressive German military machine, the SNP has had the look of invincibility.

The SNP campaign will be launched with great fanfare but we are told it will be no Nuremberg rally appealing emotionally to base nationalism; Braveheart-style slogans are apparently to be avoided and no painting of faces in woad permitted.

Instead, we can expect an appeal to our aspirations and ambitions, a call to think ahead and consider what Scotland might achieve were it free from the shackles of the Union. It will be shaped and sold as political positivity with the full intention of branding any opponents, no matter how upbeat and smiling, as negative, doom-laden pessimists.

Yes Scotland, a name that suggests Salmond has conceded that there will be only one question (otherwise it would surely have been Yes Yes Scotland) will be the happening campaign with all the dynamic approach of a blitzkrieg. Surprising fronts will be opened, leaving unionists confused about what treasured certainty will be assaulted next. Celebrities will be revealed and then drip-fed to a gasping public, not because what they think or say matters, but because they create a sense of momentum and a comfort that people we like or admire think the same way Salmond does.

Knowing how well prepared, financed and motivated the SNP will be, and knowing how from the recent past what to expect, what then can the unionists learn that might help them, what might they change about themselves that breaks the analogy?

The first is that the unionist arguments have to be much better by being more positive and much sharper. Their big guns have certainly been sounding of late but have they been hitting the target? Just last week there were a number of reports that listed the potential job losses to Scots who work in the defence industry, from shipbuilding to aeronautics, if for British defence procurement Scotland became a foreign country.

It is an obvious point to make and it is vital for those who work directly in these fields to know what the consequences of independence might be – but to be positive in the approach, the unionists should be talking about how the union not only provides the opportunity to win British defence procurement, but international contracts too.

The likelihood is that if British companies that build ships or design and assemble electronic attack systems relocate their manufacturing base to England, then it is not just UK contracts that will go south but the international ones that come from being British too.

If being part of the union is to be seen as positive its political adherents should be quantifying the number of doors that being British opens, the number of shared opportunities that are available because of this, what that means in jobs and where the benefits lie. Other negatives can be turned into positives too.

I have heard it said that any problems that might arise between a Scotland seeking to leave the rest of the United Kingdom or be a European Union member can all be negotiated to our satisfaction. Anyone who has conducted negotiations on more than one front, as a new Scotland would have to, knows that it is foolish to believe that all negotiations can be won without any compromise whatsoever.

The question that must be asked of Salmond is what are his priorities in what he wants to achieve and what, therefore, does he consider expendable in his negotiations to achieve his goal? Staying in Nato may require British nuclear weapons to remain on the Clyde; being in the European Union may require a number of commitments on fishing, energy and currency that he might rather not admit to.

Then there are the inconsistencies of existing SNP policy clashing with the reality of how an independent Scotland would exist. If a high speed rail link is so vital to Scotland’s future economy, why would the UK wish to finance it ten or 15 years after we left it behind? If higher education is so important to Scotland’s future, how could it be financed properly when English students would come to be treated like other EU citizens, such as Germans and French, and receive their education for free?

And then there are the questions that must ask just what Scotland would be like. Would we keep Holyrood as it is? Would it not need more MSPs so that it could properly scrutinise and legislate for defence, pensions, welfare benefits, the Treasury and foreign affairs?

The awkward and self-important committee system cannot cope even now: how would it cope with much greater demands? Would we not require more politicians, more public servants and more offices – indeed a new Holyrood to be able to cope?

By extolling the positive aspects of the union, the many negative weaknesses of separation can be brought to light and Salmond’s troops can be repulsed. Do the unionists have a Churchill, a Dowding or a Montgomery? From this week on they had better find some.

• Brian Monteith is policy director of ThinkScotland.org