UK Edition
Although referendums were never normally seen as the British way of doing things - a bit, well, foreign to our way of thinking – here in Scotland we’ve become past masters at the things.
Everyone in this part of the world could be forgiven for being a bit blasé about them, given that it seems like only yesterday when we finished a mammoth two-year-plus campaign that led up to the referendum on Scottish referendum.
The vote may actually have been some 18 months ago but many of us still seem to be fighting that epic battle at a time when we’re supposed to be concentrating on the new one – the, by comparison, short, sharp fight over continued EU membership.
However, what strikes many most forcibly north of the Cheviots are the similarities between the complaints and moans of those who wish to take the UK out of the EU with those that we heard long and loud from who wished to take Scotland out of Britain. In a somewhat incredible irony, they are almost identical to the extent that were it not for the fact that he is a staunch Remainer we could almost substitute Alex Salmond’s voice for those of any of one of the principal proponents of Brexit.
And it would appear that Brexit in 2016 means to ape Wee Eck’s ultimately unsuccessful tactics from 2014 all the way to ballot box on June 23.
In particular the Leave campaign is very exercised by what they say is the Project Fear campaign, so-called, being run from 10 Downing Street. This nom-de-guerre was first jokingly, but stupidly, given voice by a Better Together functionary in Glasgow in 2013 and immediately gained notoriety amongst the harassed separatists. In reality all it was a determination by Unionists to shoot down as quickly and as thoroughly as possible all of the SNP’s more grandiose claims about life in an independent Scotland.
What made things all the more galling for the Nats was that it worked. Under Alistair Darling’s detailed, but not altogether fearsome, guidance every SNP claim was unpicked and generally debunked – none more so than their White Paper claim that every Scot would be £1000 better off after independence and their insistence that they’d keep sterling after breaking away.
Such a boast might well equate to the current one from Brexit, to the effect that leaving the EU would save British taxpayers some £350 million per week – a claim that’s hotly disputed, not least by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
But there are many more parallels. When President Obama said recently that he believed the UK would be better off staying in the EU he was denounced as a ‘hypocrite’ by Brexit who said he’d been put up to it by David Cameron.
In 2014 when the same president said Scotland would be better off staying in the UK he was attacked by Alex Salmond who said he’d been put up to it by David Cameron.
Last month the CBI was attacked by Vote Leave for encouraging bosses to tell their employees about the merits of EU membership. This amounted to “big corporate bosses ganging up on their staff.”
In 2014 the CBI complained that it had been subjected to a “ massive and well co-ordinated attack” by the SNP for accusing it of not having a business case for independence.
Bank of England governor Mark Carney was subjected to calls for his resignation over his belief that leaving the EU posed the “biggest domestic risk” to Britain’s financial stability. In 2014 he was attacked by nationalists for casting doubt on Scotland’s ability to use sterling after independence.
In 2014 the International Monetary Fund infuriated the SNP when it predicted that an independent Scotland would have the second highest deficit of any advanced economy. Last week Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s chief executive, maddened Brexit by warning against Britain leaving the EU.
It’s possible that all of the above are wrong about the effects of Britain’s departure from the EU just as they were right about Scotland’s prospects outside the UK but I doubt it.
I don’t think there is a conspiracy of the elite against Brexit; if there is a conspiracy it’s a shared view that Britain’s future would be better safeguarded by remaining a member of the EU.
Oh yes, and on harking back to the independence referendum I don’t remember anyone on either side bringing Hitler into the argument. Thank goodness.
If they were correct to keep Scotland in Britain, aren’t they right about the UK in the EU?