Analysis: Alex Salmond’s ‘Broad church’ looks a bit one-sided

SPEAKING as the stage was being dismantled, organisers of the independence campaign launch attempted to explain what the big day yesterday was not.

The Yes Scotland campaign was not going to produce a precise blueprint on how exactly an independent Scotland will work, they said. Nor will the campaign be there to answer the (lengthy) media inquiries as to how independence supporters want the country to be run. The Yes Scotland campaign is none of these things. Rather, organisers made clear, it is focused simply on getting people to sign up to the basic principle espoused in the “Yes Declaration”, that it is the people who live here who are best placed to run Scotland.

In his speech, Alex Salmond noted it was this “self-evident truth” that allowed such a “diverse” group of people to stand behind the same banner, from right to left. Campaign organisers say they have already tested that central principle and found it helps turn sceptics into, at least, open-minded listeners. Their hope is that, by keeping focused on this principle, the “whole community of the realm” – as Mr Salmond put it – will give independence a hearing. In an election where 49.9 per cent of the vote is failure, clearly that is something the First Minister needs to do.

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As Dougie Maclean and Lou Hickey broke into song at the launch-cum-rally, so it became clear this was not going to be the place for a detailed explanation on how monetary union can operate alongside fiscal independence. Not surprisingly, Labour hit out at the lack of detail. In a cutting response, Johann Lamont said: “Alex Salmond won’t answer the questions but seems to think it will be enough to try to create the sense of pride we feel when the national team runs out at Hampden and then ask us all to fill out a ballot paper.”

Mr Salmond may, like Churchill, win the war. But, like Churchill, there is no guarantee he gets elected afterwards. It “is for each individual Scot to decide what [independence] means for them”, said one of the campaign team, speaking about the period after a successful “yes” vote. But, after proclaiming this open-minded approach, the campaign launch proceeded to give a thumping big steer as to the kind of country it envisages – a left-wing one. Brian Cox hammered the “appalling Thatcherite administration” and Tony Blair. Dennis Canavan, actor Martin Compston and former union leader Tommy Brennan attacked the direction of the coalition government. Meanwhile, the lack of a pro-business figure on stage was a curious oversight, out of character with the “all-things-to-all-men” approach of the SNP since 2007.

Given the largely centrist instincts of many Scottish voters, Mr Salmond’s broad church may need to build some pews elsewhere in the church, rather than the pile that existed yesterday on the left.