This was the Secretary of State for Scotland on the BBC’s coverage of the Scottish Conservative conference earlier today.
The broadcaster’s political editor Brian Taylor gets uncharacteristically indignant with Mundell’s response, and well he might.
Mundell insists, as he has done for years, that Scots voted in 2014 while knowing that they’d subsequently be getting a referendum on EU membership. But as we’ve clearly established previously on this site, that’s complete nonsense. An EU referendum was conditional on a Tory majority in the 2015 general election, and in 2013 and 2014 almost nobody thought that was going to happen.
(We did, of course, but nobody listens to us.)
According to UK Polling Report, in the month leading up to the indyref vote there were 39 polls of UK voting intention conducted. Exactly two of them gave the Tories a lead over Labour, both times of just a single point, with one dead heat. The other 36 all put Labour ahead, by as much as 8 points and with an average lead of 4%.
In late August 2014, bookies were making a Conservative majority – the only outcome which would have guaranteed an EU referendum – a 3/1 long shot, with Ed Miliband favourite to be next PM:
The Tories had been at those odds or longer all year. In a televised debate a week later, just 16 days before the referendum, even Ruth Davidson made a point of saying that the Tories weren’t looking likely to win, and therefore an EUref was a long shot.
“It’s disingenuous of Patrick [Harvie] to say that No means out and Yes means in, when actually the opposite is true.
No means we stay in, we are members of the European Union. And yes, IF the Conservatives win the next election – which frankly isn’t looking likely by the polls, but we’re trying our best – we will allow people to have their say.”
So Mundell was flat-out lying once again. People believed that there was, at that time, less than a 50% chance of an EU referendum, as Labour had categorically ruled one out and they were expected to win the election, or at the very bare minimum deny the Tories a majority. (A hung Parliament was odds-on.) Ruth Davidson was actively telling people in independence debates that it was unlikely.
The No campaign was crystal clear that voting No was voting to stay in the EU, and that voting Yes meant leaving.
It’s the rewriting of history over the EU that most strikingly characterises the No side’s ongoing panic about the prospect of a second indyref. They simply hope that if they tell the lie stridently enough for long enough everyone will forget the truth. But we’d still give you a lot more than 3/1 on that happening.
