I started out swithering over independence. Call it prudence. I didn’t believe in declaring too early. And maybe there was a benefit. I kept an open mind. I wanted to hear both sides. I went looking.
How do you judge these things? Head or heart? Dig through the hyperbole and rhetoric? Listen to the sound debate makes? Look for the unexpected and new as people point the way ahead?
So I found, maybe as I’d expected, the tone of Yes was more positive, more open and welcoming. I’m not saying there are none who rave and rant with the irresponsibility of true Twitterati. There are, but the feeling at most levels of discussion is engaged, innovative.
Contrast that with No. Again accepting the stark, raving social-media ranters as mere sideshows for our recreational outrage, I listened to their acknowledged spokes-people, figureheads, policy makers and thinkers. All I heard was the same stereotyped political noise that emanates from the lobbies of Westminster.
I heard no understanding of the grievances ordinary people might have, no openness to new ideas on how to find a way forward within the Union they're so passionate about. In fact, I found no real passion. Where people had doubts and fears, No rubbed those tender sensitivities raw. Poured fear upon fear. If anyone admitted to uncertainty, the response seemed to be wait till you hear this, you’ll be terrified.
Still, I waited, because I wanted to hear a positive vision for our union that wouldn’t inflame our concerns but would show us a way ahead. I wanted to hear a coherent commitment to social justice, a new approach to economic affairs that didn’t pander to corporates at the expense of the vulnerable. I hoped I might hear it in fragments from the different UK political parties, from each according to their philosophies.
I heard one voice saying nothing of the kind. One voice so in unison I knew there were no philosophies behind it. Apart from the huge cry of dismissal, a cry of how dare you? Apart from party political evasions putting off commitment for ever, the eternal 'wait and see; it'll be in our manifesto'.
After that, more of the same. Continued caustic attacks based on character assassination not argument; facts dressed up in political spin; interminable repetitions of how dreadful independence will be compared with the warm and fuzzy union. But no positive future, no acknowledgement of actual concerns, no empathy, no will to understand. We, the misguided, were fools to even hope for change, rogues and vagabonds to cry out for it, dupes to ever believe there was another story we’d not been told, traitors to suggest it.
What I’m left with at the eleventh hour is this. Vote No and you will get more of the same. This is as better together as it gets. It won't be the status quo but more fear (because that’s their only currency), more deaf ears, more scapegoats and demons than you could shake a stick at. The rich will get richer and the poor will for a short time still be with us. They too will disappear into that oblivion where non-persons, the lazy and crippled, are consigned. We might remain but horribly cowed by the thought that, we too, might fall from our precarious grace and follow them.
To think, I would have had to write a positive vision of the union for myself if I’d been so inclined. All the things we still need in the greater union but which have been ignored or stripped away already. I’ve decided, I can’t wait forever. If there are unanswered questions still for us on the Yes side, they reflect a necessary uncertainty as we try to decide our own future. In the No camp no-one has even asked those questions of themselves. Better Together, mired in the same old morass, going to hell in a handcart? No thanks.
In the end, it’s simple. Yes, the wider movement, the groundswell of grassroots groups, this unlikely coalition of shades of political opinion, business alliances, civic nationalists, internationalists is redrawing internal relationships. It will redraw external ones too, between regions and nations in these islands, maybe even elsewhere in this fearful and conflicted planet. However you read this paragraph, it amounts to a vision of sorts, some of it mine, some borrowed, some shared. A vision of a positive future.
The No vision is just that: no vision.
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