Joyce McMillan: Give us a break from the negativity

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself sitting in the audience at a particularly high-powered Edinburgh event, designed to debate the future of the Union between England and Scotland. The speaker list was undeniably distinguished; the First Minister put in a brief appearance and many of the leading academics in the field were present.

There were also – appearing on the Unionist side of the argument – a few former Cabinet ministers, men with experience of British government at the highest level, both Labour and Conservative. In the final session of the day, two of these grandees confronted Nicola Sturgeon and Duncan Hamilton of the SNP in a closing debate; yet, what should have been an evenly-matched argument, rapidly dwindled into something of a rout.

It wasn’t that the matched pair of Privy Counsellors had nothing to say about Scotland’s future; they were full of dire warnings about the awful consequences of separation, and the collapse of Britain’s defences if Scotland were to pull out of Nato. Yet, when they were challenged to produce positive arguments for Scotland’s future in the Union – a vision of a new, dynamic United Kingdom for the 20th century – they simply could not do it; within seconds, they slipped back into their default mode of irritable doom-mongering, and then fell silent.

And I thought about this lamentable performance again, as I contemplated the smooth face of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, gleaming over the dispatch box during this week’s Budget speech. In the immediate aftermath of the Budget, the SNP’s Angus MacNeil knew exactly what to say. He glanced contemptuously at George Osborne’s income tax giveaway to the rich, noted the amount of oil revenue from Scottish waters pouring into Westminster’s coffers, and declared that it was “time for a Yes vote in our independence referendum”; and it’s difficult for any politically-aware Scot not to share the feeling that the Union looks increasingly fragile, as this latest round of right-wing government takes its toll.

Back in the 17th century when it began, after all, the Union was about Protestantism, security, and the huge opportunities that opened up for Scotland’s relatively well-educated population, once they gained access to a world of personal and commercial opportunity in England’s growing empire. And after the Second World War, victorious Britain reimagined itself as a beacon of democracy and welfare in the postwar world, the nation that had licked Hitler, learned the lessons of the Great Depression, and founded its National Health Service; and that would now nurture and value its own people, from cradle to grave.

Now though – well, what is Britain about, in the age of David Cameron and George Osborne? If it’s about freedom, it seems mainly to be the freedom of the rich to drive down the pay and conditions of ordinary workers, until the local economies their incomes once used to support finally collapse in ruins. If it’s about democracy, it’s about a choice between major political parties visibly corrupted by the overweening influence of a tiny, wealthy minority. And if it’s about welfare – well no, it can’t be about welfare, in a nation which already has some of the meanest pensions and benefits in the developed world, which is determined to reduce their value even further, and is also determined to pursue a path of vast and growing inequality that has been shown to inflict profound damage on all members of a national community, from top to bottom.

What’s truly alarming, though, is the possibility that this Union – severely wounded during the Thatcher years, revived only briefly after the New Labour victory in 1997, and now receiving what looks like a series of death-blows from David Cameron and his fatuous boyband of Thames Valley millionaires – may somehow stagger on without sense or meaning, let off the hook by a combination of intellectual laziness in the SNP camp, and a still widespread lack of confidence among Scottish voters. If Scotland were to vote happily and confidently for the positive prospect of a decent, dynamic and evolving Union, then a No vote in the referendum would not be a disaster, even for the SNP. If Scotland were to vote Yes for independence – well, then, it would be up to us to work out exactly what that means in 21st-century terms, and to make a kirk or a mill of it, as best we can.

For Scotland to vote No to independence out of fear and loathing, though – out of panic at the thought of going it alone in difficult times, and a sense that, however loathsome the British government is, there is no guarantee that a Murdoch-schmoozing Alex Salmond could do much better – would be a desperately destructive and negative outcome to the current constitutional debate, and one that is beginning to look more likely as the weeks wear on.

It can only be avoided if one or other of Scotland’s leading political parties now decisively raises its game – the SNP by sharpening up its vision of how a social-democratic future for Scotland can actually be achieved, in a western world still utterly dominated by the failed dogma of neoliberalism, or the Labour Party by leading the movement to allow the Scottish people to vote for the enhanced devolution they say they want, thereby opening up the door to a serious new discussion – political, economic and institutional – about how a reformed future Britain might look.

There is precious little sign, though, that either party is about to do any such thing. The Labour Party has, in the words of one commentator, “lost its constitutional mojo”, and kicked the whole subject into touch; the SNP seems to think it need only wait for Scotland’s natural revulsion against the style and policies of the Cameron government to deliver a Yes vote.

As the great advocate of positive attitudes in Scottish politics, though, Alex Salmond should remember that in the end, revulsion is not enough. And without a convincing plan for a new Scotland – one that builds confidence, confronts real problems, and decisively demonstrates an alternative to the failed ideology of the past 40 years – that disgust with the UK government is likely to lead not to a Yes for independence, but to yet more political apathy, disengagement, and despair.