Duncan Hamilton: Rainbow alliance proves independence will embrace political diversity

IF THE perfect film should engage a whole spectrum of emotion, the launch of the Yes campaign at an Edinburgh cinema on Friday ticked most of my boxes.

I started with genuine anxiety. This, after all, was a launch that really mattered. It was not about winning an election, but rather about changing a nation and rewriting a constitution. In British politics, it simply doesn’t get any bigger. This campaign is the culmination of the efforts of so many – including those who did not live to see its beginning, but without whom it would not have been possible.

I arrived at the launch worried at what appeared to be a frightening lack of coherence. The previous evening I had listened to Patrick Harvie of the Greens and Colin Fox of the SSP listing a range of differences each had with the SNP. I had woken to a reassuringly poised radio performance from Dennis Canavan explaining his journey from Unionist to Nationalist based on his political experience of Westminster and Holyrood. Each saw independence as a means to an end, and not an end in itself. But thereafter, each also had a radically different vision for the future. The media focus was already on those differences rather than the question of independence. Could the launch keep so many different and divergent voices in harmony? This was everything the SNP used to be before it grew up – freestyle jazz rather than disciplined political message.

As it turned out I was not just wrong, I was missing the whole point. Not that the launch was homogenous, pitch perfect or consistent. Quite the reverse in fact. It was a series of contributions – some in speech, others in song, still others in poetry – each exploring different priorities and aspirations. None were the same. Some were “on message” in a traditional campaigning sense, others emphatically not. Some contributions were from SNP supporters, others from a Labour background and some of the most compelling from an entirely non-party persuasion.

And here’s the thing – that diversity and spectrum of opinion was not a weakness but the very essence of what this campaign is about.

Every contributor from Elaine C Smith and Liz Lochhead, to veteran trade unionist Tommy Brennan and Hollywood actor Brian Cox, accepted the necessity of independence as a means for delivering reform. The shared goal is to establish normality; a situation within which democratic politics in Scotland is renewed and each point of the political spectrum can thereafter make its case to the electorate. The Brian Cox contribution was eloquent and passionate. It was hard-hitting stuff, exactly what politics used to be in the 1980s and early 1990s before we all made a rush for the safe centre ground. It was emphatically “off-message”, sometimes politically naïve and absolutely compelling precisely because of that honesty.

So will there be disagreements in the Yes campaign ranging from the decision to support the monarchy to the case for a low tax economy for business? You bet. And you know what? It doesn’t matter two hoots. That spectrum is real, it is the Scotland beyond party politics. It is, in short, what this referendum is meant to be all about.

The essential premise underpinning the Yes campaign is that whilst parties disagree, nations ultimately unite. That means that in Scotland we identify the highest common denominator and work from there. The range of opinion being expressed of “what to do” with independence, hints at choices for another day. What matters here and now is that each and every one of those in the campaign agree that independence is the sine qua non.

In an exhausting two-and-a-half year campaign, that essential unity of principle allied to being relaxed and flexible about divergent views on party policies is not only possible, it is healthy. After all, the point is not to limit what independence means, but rather to win independence and thereafter offer the widest possible choice to the people of Scotland.

That doesn’t mean each party isn’t responsible for defining and explaining its own plans post-independence. For example, voters rightly want to know the SNP position on currency, pensions and national debt. Those questions deserve answers. But in return no-one should seriously expect the same answers from every member of the Yes campaign. Democracy without diversity is meaningless.

Sitting at the campaign launch, I also started to imagine the launch of the No campaign. It will surely be a fraught affair. Where the Yes campaign agrees on independence, the No campaign agrees on absolutely nothing other than opposing independence. In which case, the positive case for the Union becomes what exactly? Vote no and despite blocking a second question on “devo max” we promise to look again at this? That Unionist position is risible, and remains avoidable only if they embrace and champion an alternative to independence. The failure to do so increases enormously the chance that the independence story will have a successful ending.