The New and more complicated Yes-Movement

It was very instructive to read the reaction to Nicholas Macpherson’s article (£) in the Financial Times on July 8th, where he argued that Scotland had a great opportunity by going for independence after the wider UK voted to leave the European Union.

The context of the reaction was that Macpherson was a senior civil servant at the Treasury Department in London during the 2014 independence referendum, and he was a key person in the work to make Scotland vote no. He broke civil service impartiality rules with the motivation that as it threatened the territorial integrity of the UK state, normal impartiality did not apply in that case.

So, for him to now write an article about the potential benefits of independence was met with surprise by many. Even delight. And that was why the response was so instructive, and why it can tell us something of how different a new independence referendum will be, because the supposed benefits that Macpherson sees is a smaller state, leaner social provisions, a growth focused economy more like a Celtic Tiger than a Nordic social democracy.

In short, Macpherson sees a more perfect neo-liberal enclave situated to the north of a country that has rejected globalisation and neo-liberalism, albeit for more right-wing demagoguery reasons. But beggars can’t be choosers. Neo-liberals see the chance to rescue some of the Wild West of London’s banking by moving it to the smaller, and weaker, Edinburgh.

The first independence referendum was about turning out Easterhouse and Govanhill to vote, and we did. This coming referendum will be about turning out the property owners, capitalists, and the banking class to win. Therefore, it will be a profoundly different kind of referendum. It will be a conservative prospectus, a “keep things as they are against the uncertainty of Brexit”.

Because of this, it is going to be important for us on the left-wing to reject any participation in a new White Paper that’s going to explain HOW Scotland will be run as an indendent state. Our participation in a new yes-movement should be limited to answering the question: “CAN Scotland be run independently”. We have to be better at explaining how we can run things. For instance, we must offer a better explanation of currency.

However, tax rates, social provision, regulatory arrangements, corporations’ statuses are things that will be decided by Holyrood once we are independent. That can not be allowed to dominate asking the much simpler question of “Can we be independent?”.

Because once we are independent, we are once again going to have to work to turn out Easterhouse and Govanhill to vote, and it won’t be about becoming an ally of Schäuble and Dijsselbloem in their pursuit to break Greeks or Spaniards like Macpherson wants . It won’t be about inviting the casino capitalists to occupy the Mile once they’ve lost The City.

That’s why, in my opinion, any party who considers itself on the left of Scottish politics, should already now declare a rejection of a detailed White Paper written by centrist parties. Particularly if that White Paper spells out policy provisions for how bread and butter political issues shall be sorted after the referendum.

This is a more complicated prospectus. One the one hand, it needs to be more detailed, and explain why independence can work. We need to do a better job of explaining than we did in 2014. On the other hand, we have to resist the natural pull of demuring with other parties when they talk about HOW independence is going to be like. This new and complicated yes-movement is something that we have to start to think through right away.