Margo MacDonald: The party’s over in run-up to poll

Now we can roll out the information needed to help people understand and decide. And this Independista, for one, would like to see debated the different contingencies and choices that are likely to be the issues in the Holyrood general election that follows the referendum, and not just the SNP policy on the EU or the currency, monarchy, and what have you.

The opposition voiced by MSPs in particular to an independence referendum reflects an unwillingness to think outside the party.

Some chunter out the usual Pavlovian opposition responses to SNP proposals, others with experience of Holyrood’s ministerial glass ceiling stress that it’s extended powers that are needed, without specifying which powers or why we need them. A few more thoughtful cases are genuine Don’t Knows following their flirtation with the debate on Scottish/British identity.

The idea of home rule should be pretty familiar, but the further information on independence being asked for by many of the people I encounter can now be produced in as fair and as logical a manner possible. For example, a young taxi driver asked me if I could supply him with the answers to the most common questions he’s asked about the referendum.

Apart from his own need for more information before he finally makes up his mind, he would like to be able to answer visitors who want to know the choices and issues.

I’ll do as he asks, and have developed his request into a style of supplying information which I hope is conducive to building understanding that the referendum is not a test of party political support. It’s for every individual living in Scotland, qualified to vote, regardless of which party they support, to express his or her opinion on whether Scotland should be a separate country, with full sovereignty over her affairs.

It’s essential that party political interests and activities are distinguishable from the long campaign leading to the referendum, first in the information stage and then through the support-garnering part, if possible.

The experience of the 1979 referendum on devolution was that because Labour was so unpopular, the creation of a Scotish Assembly following a referendum was simply another stick with which to beat James Callaghan. Even people who supported the idea voted against it in the referendum for this reason.

Therefore, the responsibility lies with the SNP to demonstrate continuously that it is not the party’s referendum. Although the SNP government won the right to organise it, the referendum is for individuals qualified to vote in Scotland.

Too many people think of the big test to come sometime in 2014 as the SNP’s referendum, or Alex Salmond’s policy on the referendum. It’s neither – it’s yours.

The question every one of us will be asked to answer will be: “You have only two choices, choose the one that is closest to, or the same as, what you think.”

That implies, however, that the no to independence groups must roll out their explanation of why Scotland has never achieved the economic growth achieved south of the Border.

I support Scotland becoming a fully self-governing country, with an economy constructed to reflect our needs, capabilities and aspirations, with control of all resources, and responsibility for representing Scotland abroad.

After you’ve obtained the information you wanted before making up your mind, no matter what the  eventual question is, if you agree with the above statement, you should vote yes.

Gradually learning

I WAS interested to see that the big man of Catalan politics, Jordi Pujol, the first Premier of Catalunya, was back in Scotland.

After meetings with him in Barcelona in 1978 to discuss common interests of the devolutionary politics of the time, I invited him to return the visit and he and the deputy leader of the Parti Quebecois came, and spoke at a huge outdoor meeting. Both spoke powerfully, and the  delegates loved them.

But before either spoke, most of the SNP national executive left the platform in case anybody thought them to be too radical.

And when it came to paying Senor Pujol’s modest expenses, including his flights, I had to fight to get the executive to pick up the tab

Maybe former president Pujol also has a long memory and that’s why he’s never met Alex Salmond.

The former president has followed a very similar game plan to the SNP. He was a gradualist, the difference between the SNP and he was that he never denied it.

But just like the secret SNP gradualists who now talk of nothing else and claim to have been fundamentalists, Jordi cautiously concedes that perhaps independence is better able than  devolution to cope with the new, mega EU.