SNP's unintentionally funny Choose Scotland campaign debunks nationalism better than I could – William Deans

The author of an article launching the SNP's Choose Scotland campaign should take the title of the worst poet in the English language from William McGonagall, who was played by the late, great Spike Milligan in a 1975 comedy. Picture: Ronald Dumont/Express/Hulton Archive | Getty Images

“There is a distinct, undeniable feeling that comes with being a Scot. It’s in the mist rising off the landscape, the quiet warmth of a local pub on a rainy evening, and the shared, unshakeable sense that we ought to look after one another.”

For more than 100 years, William McGonagall held the crown as the worst poet in the English language. That was until this week, when the SNP launched their latest campaign for independence. It turns out that being a true Scotsman involves mist and pubs. Who knew?

You have to feel a little bit sorry for whatever SNP staffer or self-important politician drafted those lines. You can tell that they really thought they had something special. Instead they have summed up, more powerfully than almost anyone else could, just how hollow and ridiculous nationalism truly is.

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Hard to find a better parody

I must admit, when I saw the campaign tagline “Choose Scotland”, I was ready with indignation. The SNP were once again reverting to their smug, entitled framing, implying that the only way to “Choose Scotland” is to choose independence. It smacked of the sneering messaging of 2014, when people were asked whether they were on “Team Scotland” or not.

Having read the campaign screed, however, I now feel that I owe a vote of thanks to the SNP. If you were looking to write a parody of nationalism and its narcissism of petty difference, you really could not do much better than this.

Imagine reaching for a deep, resonant justification of what it is that makes Scottish people different from people in the rest of the United Kingdom – so fundamentally different that we need to divide ourselves off politically, put up barriers between one another – and coming up with mist, pubs and the concept of being nice. Thank goodness no other country is like that, eh?

It should be a source of great embarrassment to whatever sorry pen wrote those lines that the best comparison here is not some uniquely Scottish national character, but former Prime Minister John Major’s much-mocked paean to Britain in the 1990s as “the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs”.

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A distinct, undeniable feeling?

McGonagall-worthy lines aside, the SNP campaign launch is filled to the brim with unintentional humour. Apparently “severing our ties with our largest trading partners during a global cost-of-living crisis is like burning your front door to keep your home warm” (meaning Brexit, not Scexit). If only someone had told them.

Amongst the twee, self-congratulatory sweet nothings about how wonderful we Scots all are, there is still, of course, the familiar divisive nationalism. It is “someone else” controlling where we go; “London” and “Westminster” telling us what to do. The idea that it might just be “us”, sharing a country with other people who are mostly just like us, and making decisions together – that foreign concept does not get a look in.

I don’t know if there really is a “distinct, undeniable feeling that comes with being a Scot”. I do know, however, that there is a good trait we share with people across these islands – and that is to cast a sceptical eye over charlatans who try to win our hearts and minds with bad poetry.

William Deans is chief of staff to Alistair Carmichael MP