Scotland’s universal panacea

Salmond’s promise seems to have turned into fixing all of Scotland’s ills.

Question Time this week was in Inverness with no politicians discussing the independence debate. It seemed to crystallise a shift in the debate from discussing facts to promising a panacea.

Ahead of the debate the “Yes” camp had already begun to suggest that Scottish productivity would lift in an independent Scotland — not through anything other than people being spurred on to be more productive. At the time this seemed a little opportunistic, but the show seemed to continue this trend with a whole raft of issues being promised to be better in an independent Scotland. The problem is that a lot of these idealisms are already real powers available to the Scottish Parliament:

• A more social conscious government — the government will not really change, most day-to-day running of Scotland is controlled by the Scottish Parliament already…
• The feared privatisation of the NHS being reverted — it will become more socially conscious. The Scottish Parliament already have control over NHS spending in Scotland — has it already?

So it seems that the “Yes” camp is now using the lack of understanding of the current powers available to the devolved Scottish Parliament to whip up support of the “Yes” vote.

The most striking was a young twenty something who said that a “Yes” vote was a chance to engage with the political process for the first time. For them to get representation where the currently feel they don’t have it? I was stunned, clearly they don’t realise that the Scottish Parliament uses PR meaning their vote is better represented in their parliament than in any other part of the union. Further, the Scottish Parliament has amongst its existing powers control over social welfare spending and health.

The danger here is that twenty somethings across the UK are a disenfranchised group, page 4 of this document shows that in 2005 only 38% of 18-24 years old voted versus 74% of 65+. This lifted in 2010 to 50% of 18-24 year olds, but turnout is consistently much lower. So if the “Yes” camp can mobilise the young into voting “Yes” in the hope of a greater connection with politics, this will be a real risk for the “No” camp.

The problem for the “No thanks” camp is that they are increasingly having to fight hope as the “Yes” message, not policy. How do you run a positive campaign when you are trying to fight against hope?