Why I'm voting Yes or What is "a nation'? What might it be?

I value people in different ways at different times, ways that reflect who I am and what I'm doing.  My family, my friends, people I work with, people who live next door, people who live the the next street. And it's not that these relationships have a ranking order...it's just that at different times they are of differing importance to me. Mostly that's just accidental...whether I'm at work or not.  Or on Facebook.

My identity, or identities, are made out of how I am related to other people. There's no PRINCIPLE involved. I haven't got a fixed hierarchy of "relationships." I am part of the subset of "things that are alive" which is in turn a subset of "things that exist" if you want to get cosmic about it.  I am also Tom and Gregor's Dad. One relationship I have, one identity I have, doesn't cancel out all the others.  We're all allowed more than one.

It depends on circumstance which one happens to matter most at that moment.

My circumstance on September the 18th this year is that I am one of the Scottish electorate who get to make a really important decision. A decision that I and the rest of the people voting that day have never been able to take before. And that a peculiar set of historical circumstances that seem unlikely to recur in the immediate future have accidentally conspired to afford me and everyone else I am voting with that day.

So what are "we" - that day's accidental, contingent "we" going to do about it? Are we going to collectively decide to be "a nation" ? Not again, like in the song, but a functional, sovereign democracy for the very first time? Are we really going to reinvent ourselves and our relationships with our families, our neighbours and the wider world...by voting Yes?

What do we mean by "nation"?

For me, a nation is not a flag or an anthem or an accent.  A nation is a way of thinking about ourselves and then organising ourselves. Most of all, a nation is a way of valuing people. And I think we need new ways to do that. I think we can do that better if we decide to be a nation, and decide that a nation is a way of organising things for the good of the people who live there.

Oh, we can value people by how much they spend or how much they earn.  Or how much they inherit. Or how much they manage to avoid paying in tax.

But a "nation" is a way of valuing people as people, just because they happen to be people.

It's not the only way to do it, it's not even the best way to do it, philosophically.  But it is a way of valuing people practically, on an organisable scale. On a practical scale that is democratically accountable, for example.

Now, Scotland is no worse or no better than anywhere else.  It's just another place, probably more fortunate than most in terms of it's economic and human potential, but not intrinsically or essentially different from our neighbours. I'm not voting Yes because I think we're anything special. But I do think we're a nation.  Or, to be more precise, I do think that we could be.

I think that we might be offering ourselves the chance...just the chance...of re-designing the society we live in on the basis of a principle of human value. That if I value my autonomy, my health, my work, my place in my society, then I cannot logically deny that same valuation to anyone else.  And that if i choose to pool my autonomy with those of others in  order to get things done, then what those things are should be decided by those who will benefit from those things.

It's not rocket science.  It only sounds like a daydream because that is not the kind of country I live in now.

I think the country we'd be unilaterally breaking (which is another story), the UK, I think that was a nation once.  I think that when we all together elected the Labour Government of 1945 and set in train the reforms we are all so familiar with - the welfare state, the nationalisation of essential industry and the NHS - that that was Britain's national moment.  Perhaps its most important democratic national moment when we collectively decided that the dreadful poverty of the 1930s and the war of the 1940s were telling us that we had to re-organise "Britain" on the principle of the welfare and security of its people, on banishing the evil;s of ignorance and want.  I think that was a moment of national solidarity.

I absolutely defy anyone to identify anything like that in the country we live in now.  I defy anyone to describe it to me anything as like a nation.  Scotland or Britain.

If Margaret Thatcher came to power to cancel everything that Harold Wilson ever did (as a clever and dear friend of mine in London said once) then this lot are in power to cancel 1945, to return us to the pre-democratic Downton Abbey world of the 1914 they seem so curiously keen on celebrating.

(Perhaps because it was in the war of 1914 to 18 that the Britain "they" cherish began to be taken from them, by, among others, the Labour Government of 1945.)

"UK plc"  really is a place of flags and parades. It is hardly a place where the welfare of the people just because they are people is a defining value of government or economy or dominant culture. And Scotland is locked into a distorted relationship with it, anomalous and clumsy.

I really believe that if we vote Yes we will be at least starting the project of the "nation"  with an assertion of human value and of democratic participation as being the root of that value.  Of the supreme autonomy of the individual, with all his or her complex of identities and relationships, being pooled for practical purposes with those same complexities and richness in everyone we meet.

This is not to deny anything to anyone else on these islands or this earth.  It is just that, it seems to me, an independent Scotland is an exciting place to start a project of renewal of values that seem lost and even absurd in the country we live in now.

We used to call them British values.  I'd prefer to call them human values.  I will continue to share those values, as values, with my dear and clever friends everywhere else on earth

But I would like to stop dreaming about them as values and help to invent and organise a nation where they can at least aspire to becoming real. Where human value can be the principled basis of all policies, all political decisions.  If that's a leap in the dark, so be it.

That's what George Washington called an Independent USA.  I think we'll be fine

Who's with me?

Don't take my word for it!

See if there's a No Vote - this is what happens next, as written by Conservative home supremo Tim Montgomerie in the Times today.

BEWARE SCOTLAND -= THE ENGLISH BACKLASH IS COMING

" In 1951 Scotland was a divided nation — not, as now, between unionists and separatists but between Conservatives and Labour. Scotland elected 35 Tory and 35 Labour MPs. But a rot started to set in, a rot that has lasted for six decades and has made it hard for any Conservative leader to win a majority of MPs in the House of Commons.
By 1966 Scotland was electing twice as many Labour MPs as Tory MPs. Even in the 1980s when Mrs Thatcher was winning landslide victories in England she was going backwards in Scotland. By 1997 the very foundations of the Scottish Conservative party were riddled with rot; north of the border became a Tory-free zone. Even now there’s only one Scottish Tory MP.
If the Conservatives were the heartless, self-interested bogeymen of Alex Salmond’s imaginings the prospect of Scotland leaving the UK would have been irresistible, but every single Tory MP has resisted it. Moreover, David Cameron has worked with the other unionist parties to offer Scotland even more devolution if it votes to stay. Tory donors have helped to bankroll the Better Together campaign. Most credit for the likely defeat of the nationalists shouldn’t go to Alistair Darling but to one of Scotland’s least favourite politicians. George Osborne’s strategy of insisting that an independent Scotland couldn’t keep the pound has probably done more than anything else to torpedo the nationalist dream.
But if the battle for Scotland is nearly over, the battle for England might be about to begin. Today’s Future of England survey finds that most English voters want the UK to survive, but they want the terms of the relationship to change. Most think Scottish MPs should be prevented from voting on laws that apply only in England and also want Scotland to lose its budget subsidy. The average Scot currently receives about £1,400 more than the average English voter from the UK Treasury. Wales’s most disadvantaged communities are particular losers from the current spending settlement.
Until now the Conservatives haven’t felt it necessary to respond to the English awakening. It is not, after all, in the interests of Mr Miliband or Mr Clegg to empower an England leaning to the right. But I know a man who would benefit from tickling England’s tummy. He smokes. He drinks pints. And he’s called Nigel. He does even less well in Scotland than the Tories. He’s got nothing to lose by wrapping himself in the St George’s cross and I predict he will."

Okay?  Got that?

What happens after that is that Montgomerie and UKIP push the Tories..and then everyone else in the UK into a bidding war as to who can fuck up Scotland the most.  The 2015 election is won on a "Kill Scotland" mandate.

Don't take my word for it.  It's right here in black and white.

The end game of course is that we end up independent Scotland in about 2025, having been battered to shit in the meantime...

Wouldn't it be easier and quicker to just  vote Yes?

Will the British ride to the rescue of a Yes vote?

Whatever way you look at it, at this moment, the referendum result looks like it is going to be uncomfortably close for everyone. It's going to be, if you average out roughly equal weightings of Yes and No Votes...a decided "Maybe" - in terms of consensus if not arithmetic.

A No vote will be an unstable temporary No...if it is any less than decisive. A Yes vote that barely scrapes a majority will be a less than thrilling mandate for such a major constitutional change.

So are we doomed to more instability? More uncertainty? A constitutional crisis every ten minutes as the losing side in this referendum, whichever it is falls to automatically blaming everything that can possibly go wrong on any issue on our having voted the "wrong way" whichever way that is?

Is there any escape from our own indecision? In 1979, who knew that it would take 18 years (till the second devolution referendum in 1997) to transform a hair-raising, breath taking, inspiring and ultimately indecisive campaign into a boring constitutional inevitability.

(Boring constitutional inevitabilities are not fun, but they do work. A 75% vote for or against independence is beyond challenge and has a mandate to do anything it wants. A 55/45 split either way?...not so much.)

So if it's a narrow No will we really be waiting till an inevitable and tedious Yes in 2032? If a Narrow Yes...will we come to our senses in a second referendum where we promise to be quiet and good? Or will the British State come riding to the rescue of its enemies, as it has historically, in America, Ireland and India, and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

In 1775, there was every chance that with care and negotiation, the British Empire could have kept America. In 1916, there was every chance that with care and respect, the British could have negotiated a peaceful settlement in an Ireland horrified by the events of the Easter Rising. After World War I, the British might have gradually recognised the need for fundamental change in the relationship with India and its growing secular nationalist middle class.

Instead, they opened fire at Concord, shot James Connelly propped up in a chair and massacred the Sikhs at Amritsar. Someone somewhere in the British establishment could always be relied upon to do exactly the wrong thing to turn uncertain and conflicted discontent into a settled and irresistible movement for change.

And it just might be that the vengeful resentment currently being stirred South of the Border against us whining subsidy junkie sweaties...could just be it.

If there is a narrow No vote, as the polls seem to predict, what better way to ignite full blown constitutional crisis than to vengefully slash public spending in Scotland now that the threat of independence is off the table? What more tempting, crowd pleasing and utterly idiotic option might appeal more to the Tory backwoodsmen who are fed up to the back teeth with us - for whom the option we have chosen with a No Vote means shutting our mouths forever about everything - than to give the Jocks a bloody good kicking? To abolish the Barnett formula and solidify direct Westminster control over the concrete assets of energy and defence while throwing the idiot haggis munchers a shiny bone of a few extra powers on taxes that are impossible to use without strategic freedom?

And what more misguided tactic can one possibly imagine than to threaten to do just that, to say that the UK will punish us either way - not for voting Yes but for having the bloody temerity to have the referendum in the first place? A few weeks before the referendum?

Well here it is. Here too is a link to statements that have already been made threatening and promising to do exactly that.

http://wingsoverscotland.com/the-barnett-future/

This isn't over yet...and it isn't over when it's over either. The knee jerk desire for revenge within the UK establishment will see to it. In the next few weeks, we should not under-estimate the possibility that we get a decisive swing to a Yes vote not because of something clever someone says or does in Scotland, but because of something cloth-headed said or done by some halfwit in Westminster.

They've got form on this one. Watch this space.

ps.  As if by Magic, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home.

http://peterarnott.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/dont-take-my-word-for-it.html

Yes or No? The Idiotic question with the intelligent answer.

It really is a very stupid question.  Most Yes or No or in or out referenda are about getting popular agreement to a piece of legislation that is already drafted.  We would be voting on the result of negotiations, at the end of negotiations, on a detailed piece of legislation that was the result of those negotiations.  We are clearly not doing that.

So besides being a digital question in an analogue world, the fact that this referendum question is being asked how it is and when it is is the result of a peculiar set of circumstances that will be enormous fun for people writing a history or politics PHD, but that I don't propose to get into now. Time enough when it's all over.

I have said elsewhere, perhaps rudely, that when David Cameron agreed to our holding this referendum the options he had in mind for the Scottish People were that we either Shut Up or F...Off.

The option that was not on the table, (aside from devo max which would have won by a distance which is precisely why that horse is not in the race) was to talk about it.

Yes or No...you decide, he said.  But the one thing we're NOT going to do is talk about it.  We won't negotiate what an independent Scotland might MEAN in the 21st century.  We won't ask or answer any interesting questions about the prospects for the British State.

Most of all, we will not pre-negotiate.  We will not talk. About currency, about economics, about welfare, about defence, about Europe. We will of course then criticize the Yes campaign for not having the answers to questions they can't possibly answer unless we negotiate with them.  But that's just politics.

The crucial thing that the idiot question of Yes or No was supposed  to prevent was...talk.  Talk between us about democracy.  About secret agreements to renew Trident in the Holy Loch without discussion in Westminster, let alone Scotland.  To enter into trade agreements that will prevent national or international governments or trade unions from protecting workers and consumers, that mean that corporate decisions will have the force of international law with out any democratic oversight from anyone.

We certainly don't want to talk about that.

We certainly don't want to talk about the positive reasons that anyone might have for wanting democratic control of Scottish affairs in Scotland when we're doing away with democracy along with the health service and the welfare state as rapidly as possible in England and Wales.

We don't want to talk about how a Yes vote will shake the anti-democratic project to the core. We don't want to talk about negotiations with a Scottish government meaning we have to open the whole can of worms that characterises how power and wealth are distributed in these islands.

We don't want to talk.    We might GIVE you some things to keep you quiet if you vote no. (things that we can take back)

But we don't want to talk about how Britain is breaking no matter what the Scots vote for. That "Britain" is nothing more than an embarrassing historical hangover from an imperial past that is no longer sustainable or worth sustaining in the new finance led global economy.  We don't want to talk about that. We want to keep our eyes shut to that reality.

Which brings me back to the idiot question.  If we are not voting on the results of negotiations, then we are voting,( if we vote Yes,) for negotiations to start.

We are voting to recognise reality. The break up of Britain is long, slow but inevitable process that started a long time ago.

The debate in Scotland is not a cause of that broken-ness.  It is a result of it.  That broken-ness is in our crumbling welfare system and our subservience to gangster capitalism.  It is in our holding America's coat for them when they make terrible mistakes in foreign policy

And to vote No is to pretend that none of that has happened, to pretend that history isn't happening.  You'd be just as well humming Rule Britannia in an earthquake.

The real political meaning of a Yes vote is to give a mandate to start a conversation that can save democracy.  The real mandate is for a Scottish government to start the conversation that can save the best of Britain from the worst that Mr Cameron and Mr Blair and their ugly ilk have in store for us.

To vote Yes is to start the conversation.  Not finish it. To vote No is to disappear, to sign a piece of paper saying we, as a democratic culture, do not count, we do not exist.

We need these negotiations about the meaning of democracy and freedom.  Britain needs them.  Look at the papers.  look at our uncritical support for Israel.  Listen to our politicians denounce Putin while selling him guns.

We are voting Yes because we think we should be talking.  About all the things going on in Britain and the world.  We are voting Yes because we think it's time we took responsibility for ourselves.  We are voting Yes because we're ready.  We're voting Yes to be part of the world.

We're not voting Yes because we want to buy a big drill and cut ourselves off from anyone.  The powers that be may imagine the only possible reason for voting yes is that you're a red-haired maniac with a Mel Gibson obsession. It doesn't make it true.

And if we vote Yes they will have to think again.  They will have to look again.  They will have to treat with us as equals.

They will have to think!  They don't want to think!  They certainly don't want YOU to think.  Who knows where that could lead?

But we're voting Yes for democracy.  Yes for the chance of a decent society.  Yes for responsibility.  I don't think claymores enter into it.

Most of all, we're voting Yes because that's the intelligent answer. It may be very tempting to vote No to shut it all up, to pretend it all go away. But history doesn't stop because you ignore it.

I'm not voting Yes because I believe in pie in the sky.  I'm voting Yes because I believe in democracy.  I am voting Yes because to Vote No or not vote at all would be an unthinkable retreat from my responsibility to others.  Including my friends in London and in the rest of the world.

The intelligent answer is to talk. The intelligent answer is to negotiate. And a Yes vote is how we do it. A Yes vote is where we start.

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/all-back-to-bowie-s

The sad and ugly end of British Socialism

Look at them.  Look at what has become of the "people's" party in Scotland. Look at the narrow, ugly, sad hatred that blinds them to everything else. 

They only know their own resentment.  Their political ambition is that you and I share it.  That we should hate Alex Salmond like they do.  Because he stole their baw. They seem to actually believe that serving up their twisted souls for us to look at will serve them in this debate.  That we'll look at their hatred and think this is what "Better Together" looks like. They think that this is what a happy family of nations looks like.  

His manifesto commitments aside, I really want Ed Milliband to look at what and who he is leading, and just how contorted by their tribal loathing they are.  Just how deep their obsession goes.

And to ask himself. can I trust the judgement of people who think this is a clever piece of campaigning?

Have they considered what it means to win, if this is how they win? They are not only manipulative of the fears of their core voters, they are mendacious on so many levels.

Don't they know that they are burying themselves with this? That even if they win, they are being contemptible in how they go about it? That the means they use will overcome the end they seek? The Yes campaign is not breaking the Union. A union whose party of welfare and progress has been reduced to this is bankrupt of ideas as well as morality. It is already broken. The Yes campaign, it is becoming clearer by the day, is recognising something that is already reality. The resurgence in our already existing independent political culture evident everywhere in the humour and energy and invention of the Yes campaign embodies the independence that it argues for. We are not the cause of the death of empire or of British welfare-ism and solidarity. The death-hauntedness of the No campaign radiates from every word they speak.  They exhale the breath of the grave.

We are getting away from the corpse of the good things Britain used to stand for, which were once embodied in the Labour movement...because the corpse is beginning to smell. 

http://www.scottishlabour.org.uk/blog/entry/ive-got-alex-salmonds-number-and-im-calling-him-out

And this wee squib from Margaret Curran, this wee nugget of hatred and fear is what death smells like. This second rate provocation of anxiety in those very people that Labour's policy in recent years has been to ignore...while flattering and facilitating the rich in the hope of some handouts...this denigration and disenfranchising of their own supporters has rendered those voters confused, vulnerable and unrepresented. Not content with betraying it's own supporters and every principle they were supposed to stand for, these exhausted, venal creatures now argue that hope is for fools and social change is a pipe dream and a lie told by a demon called "Salmond." They find it impossible to conceive of the Yes campaign as being about anything but him.  That there is any reason to want change other than to advance Salmond's fiendish plotting...not for Scotland, but against them.

Paranoia, as Freud said, is the cousin of narcissism.

They think this is all about them. They want Salmond destroyed.  And that is the beginning and the end of their vision.  Their myopia will not let them see anything beyond the narrowest and most banal Party interest.  I suspect they barely know Scotland exists except as a property to be recovered from the man they think stole it from them.  I don't think they give a damn what happens to any of us as long as they can use our fear and our insecurity to "get" Salmond.

A No vote is incidental for them.  I doubt if they've given any thought to what it might mean for the people they represent if we weaken Scotland so critically at the moment before the whip of the anti-state, anti-democratic whip of austerity comes slashing down upon "their" voters.

Any more than they see a Yes as anything ither than a victory for "him" and thuis a defeat for them.  The benefits it might bring, if we all work together, the potential it might unlock in our people, is beyond their comprehension.

And when I look at them twitching with hatred and resentment and at their twisted attempts not to face their own moral and political failure, all I see is slow, ugly death. The sad, slow, ugly death of the British Road to Socialism. 

It's not just in the upper echelons that Labour have been corrupted by their embrace of the money changers. Even the footsoldiers are bereft of hope.

At best they are projecting their own venal, desperate helplessness on to the rest of us. At best they genuinely are pessimists who regard the "socialism" they still croak out at Party conferences in wee Scotland...as a joke. But I think their decay goes deeper.

These people voted with the Tories to make a law that caps spending on social welfare in case it interferes with the low tax, no tax plans of the rich, who are the only constituency they take seriously any more. They are using the fear and helplessness they helped to cause in our society to snuff out even the hope for change in the hearts of the people they so sloppily claim to love, as they cry their gin soaked self pitying crocodile tears at their abandonment of the poor to the privatised market forces to which they are the fawning acolytes. Every bit as much as the Tories, they are the Temple Whores of Capitalism

The political culture this field tested, focus grouped slime oozes from is one of decay and corruption, gasping it's last foetid breath. They insult me. They insult you. Worst of all, they insult the people they persuade against hoping for any better life.

They have no life, no hope, no energy, no integrity themselves. And they want us to agree with them that life is shit. They want us to endorse their failure to find life . They can imagine no life beyond the life they have already written off. They want their spiritual death to be the death of the rest of us too.

If they could articulate anything other than resentment of the life of others, I could respect their arguments. I have been waiting since the campaign began to hear a case for the Union that didn't rely on accepting and celebrating and using the worst things about people, and never appealing to the best. I have been stunned at how second rate and vapid and bitter they have been.

Is this Britain? Is this the best that Britain can offer.  The campaign for this sceptred isle has swung between carping negativity and overblown sentimental love bombs dreamed up after ten minutes worth of bored inattention in some advertising agency. It's stunning how little energy they can drag out of themselves.  It's hard to believe, sometimes, that they know or care a damn.  Which isn't great politics, let alone "a family of nations."

The irony is that there is better thought out, more sincerely felt and far better expressed affection for our neighbours on the Yes side than the No.  They have never got beyond the elementary cretinism of thinking this is all about them

When it's all about us.  Becoming grown ups.  Who will be much better members of exactly the same family of exactly the same nations once we are grown ups.

Anyway, I'm tired of listening to them. I'm tired of giving head room to the same many times repeated many times refuted terror tactics they are using on their own people. . I would find it impossible to live in any society if I thought as little of people as every utterance of the No campaign, over all these months, so clearly proves they do.

Damn them They are wrong. Human beings on both sides of the border are better than they pretend. England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland are not fated to be second rate, just as we are not fated to be supplicants at the rich man's gate.. We all of us have the chance to declare that we at least aspire to be so much better than that, and better than anything they have offered or threatened , better than any qualities they have demonstrated by their words and deeds in this debate. Better Together, in fact.
We will be better together if the relationship changes to reflect the reality of both the divergence of our political cultures, and the convergence of the creative and cultural continuing union of all the peoples of the Atlantic Isles.

Oh.  On the minor point of the currency, should it need saying again. A) we already have a Scottish Currency.  It's called the pound. B) After independence, we'll continue to use it. C) The rest is negotiation.

And looking in Margaret Curran's crystal ball.

Who Are the Scots?

"Who are the Scots? "


Those who live and work in Scotland - those who contribute to it and depend on it - are those who ought to have the governing say in who runs the place. These are the electorate both for the future and for the current campaign.  These are the people we say are "sovereign" - to be entrusted now and in future with our political decision making.


That is, we say that : - 

a) Scotland constitutes a "polity", a political entity, and that

b) democracy is in principle and practice the best way to run a polity. 

Therefore

c)  we ought to have an elected parliament in Edinburgh that can actually take the decisions on taxation and welfare and war and peace that the parliament of any other, "normal" political entity should expect to do.

We believe that if one accepts that Scotland is a real country, and that democracy is the best (least worst) form of government, then, within that definition,  a Yes vote is logically the inescapable choice to make.  We are, perhaps unreasonably, bewildered, frankly, that anyone thinks differently. 

To vote No on September the 18th you have to contend either that Scotland does NOT constitute a polity or that democracy is too good for it. 

Normality? What's that when it's at home?

We in the Yes camp argue, that is, from a position of what we perceive as "normality"  - not that Scotland is a BETTER place than anywhere else, but that it is most definitely a "place" and that those of us who live here ought really, normally, to make the decisions as to what happens here.

Our current political situation is not "normal." Normality is not normal.  It doesn't exist yet.  We have to argue"as if." That "as if" is both the strength and weakness of our position. But people in Scotland are beginning to look at "how things are"as being rather peculiar. 

The No campaign have been reduced, more or less, to repeated variations on a theme of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "why take the risk of change?" or "don't rock the boat". 

We can say : "Tell them that at the Food Bank!"

Or "Look at the level of child poverty in wealthy Scotland"

Or "Look at our disabled people being subjected to the agenda of "austerity plus terrorism" regime currently run by the now hateful and privatised government departments charged with their welfare. "

"But what guarantee is there that any of that would be better with independence?" is the question No voters ask.

And Yes voters should answer:  "WE are the guarantee.  YOU are the guarantee. If, WE, the Scottish electorate elected then re-elected a government that did this to our people, then hell mend us. But do you really think we would do that? The point is not WHAT we would choose, but the fact that WE would have the choice. And if it we found that a government wasn't to our choice any more, we could vote against the cruelty and incompetence and hatred were doing all this to us...and, unlike now,  it would make a difference. It would matter what we did and what we chose. The government would actually change. Right now, we can't do anything except complain about it  in the pub.  We want to make sure that our opinions count.  We want to make sure that YOUR opinions count. Come with us!"

Democracy too dangerous

The only real argument the No side have got is that democratic choice like that is too dangerous for us. The real powers in the world will punish  wee Scotland if we insist on our self determination.  In terms of trade, the EU, the currency...all that...a newly independent Scotland will find itself more less at war with the rest of the world, they say..and we'd lose. 

Underlying almost all of Project Fear is this very specific injunction that we mustn't vote "against" Britain, we mustn't vote "against" the neighbours because otherwise "they might hurt us".

This seems to be  a very negative opinion to hold of the character of the "neighbours" if you really think that their response to our self-determination and adulthood will be one of vengeance and spite.   Apparently it's not the nationalists who have a low opinion of our cousins.  It doesn't make much a positive case for the Union! Yes voters have much more faith that the rest of the UK and the rest of the world will behave pragmatically.

When I've been working in England, I find that most people don't really understand what's going on, but they don't wish us any harm - they don't think we wish them any harm - and they're sure "It'll all work out."

I expect nothing less of our neighbours.

As for us, I believe that if we say No to self government, it will almost immediately seem like an absurd thing to have turned down. This is because regardless of the product of the referendum, the process of the referendum campaign has established popular sovereignty in Scotland once and for all . 

Besides, as I've argued elsewhere, I don't believe that a No vote in September constitutes the foundation for anything like a sustainable political settlement. I think from philosophical first principles of democratic practice it is an accident waiting to happen.

Autonomy/self-rule/sovereignty - What's in a name? 

From first principles, then ; we, as free individuals, autonomous, "sovereign" individuals choose to pool our individual autonomy at our chosen levels of administrative convenience and democratic accountability.  

We do this in cities, regions, nation-states and associations of nation states. 

The new "normal" that has emerged during this campaign surely redefines "the Scots" as what, by any criteria, does indeed constitute a polity or nation.  We have defined ourselves.  The process of this campaign, and especially the huge popular swell of enthusiasm and hope and purposeful thinking it has unleashed all over the country and in every social sphere has entirely confirmed our perception of ourselves as being sovereign in our own country.

The future doesn't come with guarantees.  We know that.  But a Yes vote can guarantee  that the choice would remain in our hands.  

Are we really going to give that away on September 18th?  Are we really going to vote to leave the power in these islands exactly where it is?  Are we really going back to Westminster to ask for another a loan of political power when we have experienced having political power ourselves? Are we really going to vote to give all this away?  

Isn't it time to think about devolving power in the other direction.  To begin thinking, and acting "as if" all power comes form the people, and that we loan that power to governments of our own choosing?  Isn't it time to be citizens and not subjects? Sovereigns and not beggars?

Our cultural distinction as Scots is now entrenched not in tartan and shortbread but in how we read and experience the world every day.  We are already independent in everything except the name.

We are already a nation.  Not "again" but for the very first time. A nation in the 21st century. Who are the Scots? We are.  And we are not climbing back in the bottle.

Responses to Responses

It is very interesting and slightly bewildering that this particular polemic has taken ethernet wing…and has elicited some really interesting Unionist responses of a much higher quality than one gets from the papers, for example, most of the time.  They are worth checking out. 

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/07/17/dinner-with-no-voters-or-what-i-wanted-to-say-before-the-pudding-hit-the-fan/

The argument is all, of course predicated on whether or not one accepts “Scotland” and its electorate as a political entity or not. And it is a perfectly coherent logical position that it isn't and they aren't - which is what the roughly 20% of true British Unionists in this country can and should assert - that Scotland is not suited to running all its own affairs.

 (The same logic applies to all nation/states of any size, by the way – to Britain in Europe, for example. A “nation ” is something in which people identify an agency for themselves within the larger unit. Which is what is I think definitely is happening in Scotland…and may or may not happen in Shetland…or my house…If my bathroom declared itself independent of my house I wouldn't have a logical leg to stand on. But it isn't.)

Turns out Tam Dalyell was right all those years ago when he identified devolution as a slippery slope. Once there was an established democratic mechanism for mandating the government of Scotland …once individual agency and collective democracy are invested in THIS polity…then hang the “recovery” of Auld Scotia…you’re on your way to inventing a nation from the ground up – and what could be better and more empowering than that?

The simple rhetorical trope being that if you accept that a) Scotland IS a polity and b) democracy is the best way to run a polity, then you have to vote Yes.

To vote No from CONVICTION, I'd have thought you have to be convinced  either that Scotland is not a polity or that democracy is somehow inappropriate for it. 

I haven't yet heard an argument from the No camp that doesn't proceed from one or other or both of those presumptions, though only a few, (the best) will admit it.

I think the people with a genuine attachment to the British State have been shockingly ill served by the No campaign, which is so unconvinced of the virtues of the pessimistic, exhausted UK elite…that they have come up only with arguments about our unique incapacity for self rule…or to vaguely threaten that the rest of the world would be so ticked off with us that no realistic negotiations about anything would be possible.

The particular point of my piece was that, even for the most convinced believer in the Union,  we are well past the possibility of a return to status quo ante…that a No vote will also precipitate and cement changes already under way. . I really believe that a Yes vote will begin the disintegration of the power of that elite over everyone in these islands. I really believe they will use a No vote to entrench what English radicals used to call “Old Corruption”

Can, I at this point say a qualified "sorry" to any No voters who've taken offense at my tone., I' m sorry if you feel insulted or patronised.

 (Welcome to Our world!).

And I apologise if I’m sometimes intemperate. 

But I’m not saying that you’re scared. (Some of you said I said that you were scared) I’m saying that I’m scared and that I can’t see why you’re NOT scared. Just a little.

It may be that there was anger in the piece…I was rather angry when I wrote it. I had just been patronised, I felt. And , I was a little splenetic. But my point was very serious. I genuinely believe that if Yes voters are to be constantly leaned on for answers to questions about the results of negotiations that haven’t happened yet and which are being ruled out as impossible before they start, then No voters have to take on a little moral hazard about what happens when we take our single strongest negotiating card ( “we” being an assumed Scottish polity) off the table.

I also genuinely feel that as Gerry Hassan argues so well in Caledonia Dreaming, there has been an unjustified moral superiority at large in our political culture…an assumed left liberal consensus that shelters behind the irresponsibility of NOT being able to influence elections, a comfortable, self serving pre-democratic moral superiority.

And I am saying that this vote, this referendum, one way or another, blows that complacency out of the water.

We ARE going to be sovereign for those 15 hours. We will be responsible Yes or No, for what happens next.

I am unsure about lots of things about an independent Scotland. The future is like that. 

Are you certain about the consequences of a No vote? Do you really think we’ll be able to sit in the Caledonian smugness of it not being our fault anymore.

I really think we won’t. If it goes “Yes” we will have tough, grown up decisions to make about tough grown up stuff. I’m a little scared of that.,

But if we vote No, we will hand all the decisions about the difficult stuff to someone else…actually, positively, as a sovereign people (for 15 hours) choose to hand sovereignty BACK. Aren’t you even a LITTLE worried about that? 

Me, I'm terrified.

In the meantime, if you can offer me a coherent case for the Union that demonstrates the concrete advantages of the new situation that will obtain after September the 18th, then I really do want to hear it

And if you do win, I really hope you’re right…that we will be able to make social progress within the Union….because I will still be living here.

ps

Self rule is a project for everyone everywhere. The Yes campaign is part of what is happening globally. I’ve seen it. In the States, in the Arab world, in Turkey. Self -rule in the 21st Century begins with the individual, then we pool that autonomy in associations like trade unions and neighbourhood clear up schemes…or countries…nation states…or associations of nation states…as we, as sovereign individuals deem moist most effective and most democratically accountable. For me, right now, the United Kingdom of Great Britain scores very badly on these counts. I am hopeful that we can be better and do better…all of us…if we first decide to rule ourselves

pps

Finally, I had hoped it didn't need saying any more, but it clearly does: an independent Scotland for me, for many of us, is a means to an end. And genuine equity and genuine living “better together” on all these islands is the name of that aim.  By the way, the “they” I refer to all the time is not the English…it is the British elite, who batten on all of our necks. And the British elite are, as has been pointed out in many places, disproportionately Scottish.