Scotland’s trauma has shown the Euroscepticshow to win

The theme of British politics for the rest of the decade is set: ‘the elite’ versus ‘the people’. The independence referendum, which Alex Salmond skillfully shaped as a square go between a self-interested Westminster kleptocracy and the guid plain folk of Scotland, proved the electoral potency of such a message. Expect it to dominate the general election in 2015, the Scottish election in 2016 and, if it comes, an EU in/out referendum in 2017.

They all know it, now. Ed Miliband has come out the blocks at a fair clip. At the weekend, on the first day of Labour’s conference in Manchester, he spoke of a ‘yearning for change’ across Britain: ‘This country doesn’t work for most people. This week we show how we are going to change Britain so it works for everyday working people and not just a few at the top.’

But this is an increasingly hard sell for Labour. They, the Tories and the Lib Dems — since they joined the coalition Government and lost their outsider status — are ‘the few at the top’. They form a professional political class that is accused of promising much and delivering little. Mr Miliband might say he’s going to ‘change Britain’, but growing numbers of those ‘everyday working people’ are disinclined to believe him.

On Friday, one of the consequences of this rupture will show its tailfeathers when Ukip begins its own annual shindig. Coming off the back of its extraordinary success in the European elections and on the cusp of securing a Westminster seat in the Clacton by-election, the party expects as many as 2,000 people to attend.

Where Labour parades amid the glories of modern Manchester — a revitalised city which, like Glasgow, is now an arresting amalgam of industrial heritage and 21st century cosmopolitan elan – Nigel Farage and his crew of chancers will pitch up somewhere less glamorous but equally poetic: a racecourse in Doncaster.

The venue borders Mr Miliband’s constituency – where 35 per cent of voters backed Ukip in May’s European elections — and its choice is quite deliberate. Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall says: ‘We are taking the UKIP message straight into one of Labour’s most neglected heartlands, a part of the country it has taken for granted for far too long. It will give the lie to any idea that we are only a threat to the Tories.’

That is now beyond doubt. There is an anti-Establishment mood in the country that wishes a plague upon all their houses. Ukip draws support most strongly from blue-collar workers, people on low incomes, council house tenants, the northern and urban – Labour’s natural base. Many of these people are not driven solely, or even at all, by the Euroscepticism that brought Ukip into existence. They are the ‘left-behind’, who feel marginalised by the scale of immigration into the UK in the past decade, who have experienced few of the benefits and many of the downsides of globalisation, are conservative on welfare and crime and feel that their voice is no longer represented by any of the mainstream parties.

The Scottish referendum campaign saw the Yes movement cleverly position itself as a receptacle for the disenchanted – after all, the ultimate nihilistic protest vote is one to destroy the country. That majorities in Dundee and Glasgow, two cities with engrained social problems, supported leaving the UK exposes a sense of profound frustration that overrides regular, rational political debate. By any standards the case for independence was thinly made, lacked clarity and detail and rested on fantasies and suppositions. For many, that didn’t matter. The logic progressed like this: we need something else; here is something else; let’s do it.

In the aftermath of a vibrant but punishing campaign, and a decision that looked like it might go either way right until the end, Scotland is a traumatised nation. For Yes voters, the idea of independence had taken on the qualities of a religious faith: they were unquestioning, devout — to my eyes, gullible. They are now bereft. To No voters, the sudden narrowing of the polls made it seem like their country was about to be taken from them with barely a month’s notice. The wounds on both sides go deep and will take time to heal.

A form of this is what awaits the rest of the UK, I think, if and when the European referendum comes. Consider Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP who defected to Ukip and who is expected to retake his Clacton seat for his new party in the by-election on October 9. Mr Carswell is an impressive and innovative thinker, and has made his name through proposing wide reforms to our democratic processes. At the same time he has positioned himself in opposition to that notorious yet nebulous ‘Westminster elite’ and, when it comes to the EU, is a confirmed better-off-outer.

He may have jumped ship, but his extreme Eurosceptic views are shared by many of his former colleagues on the Tory backbenches — perhaps as many as half. A referendum campaign will see these MPs split from the party’s leadership and share platforms with Ukip and others of similar inclination.

The Out campaign’s playbook will be a close replica of the one developed by the Yes team in Scotland. It will be deliberately divisive, creating rancour and resentment. It will be fought on an anti-establishment, the-people-against-the-elites ticket. The BBC will get it in the neck; MI5 will be cited. There will be beguiling pictures painted of a wealthy, independent Britain with complete control over its own laws and decisions, forging lucrative new relationships with emerging economies across the world.

The similarities don’t stop there. The EU, a badly flawed institution in need of sweeping reform, presents an even easier target than the British state. Farage and friends will argue that an arrangement that made sense in the aftermath of the Second World War has served its purpose of establishing peace on the Continent and can now safely be abandoned.

The ‘elites’ will fight back, of course, but as we saw in Scotland the warnings and pleas of government, big business and global leaders have limited impact when respect for traditional institutions is so withered.

The Outers will also start from a position of relative strength. Where support for Scottish independence rarely rose above 30 per cent before the referendum campaign, polling data shows that Britain is the most Eurosceptic country in Europe, with 70 per cent saying they are ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ attached to the EU. Surveys have shown that around half would vote to leave as things stand. There is strong scepticism about David Cameron’s ability to secure the right deal. Again, to the disenfranchised the appeal will be: we need something else; here is something else; let’s do it.

The big parties do not seem close to answering the compelling questions of our age. But they will have to find some solutions if a degree of stability is to be restored to our democracy. Scotland feels like a country that has just suffered a nervous breakdown. Let’s hope it isn’t catching.

(This article appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on September 22, 2014)