In the 2014 referendum, Alex Massie got on a TV debate by posing as an “undecided voter”. That was TV fakery on a par with Major Charles Ingram winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) June 29, 2023
I’m slightly bewildered as to why a certain blogger in Somerset is identifying himself so strongly with Alex Massie’s view that Team Humza’s new independence plan reveals them to be “unserious people”, because Massie’s critique of the SNP in recent times has been the literally the opposite of Campbell’s. He was almost adulatory of Nicola Sturgeon in the days when she was forever backtracking on strategy and kicking independence into the long grass, but then he took it practically as a personal affront when she shocked him by actually trying – after a fashion, anyway – to implement her manifesto promise on independence, which he had apparently assumed was never meant to be taken seriously. He also apparently assumed that everyone else ‘knew’ it was never meant to taken seriously, and would be as outraged about the implementation of the will of the electorate as he was.
The basis for his anger remains precisely the same under Yousaf as it was in the closing days of Sturgeon – he thinks it’s utterly preposterous that anyone should think jumped-up little Scotland can just decide to have a vote on independence when we were ‘given’ one ‘only’ nine years ago. To the extent that he might graciously consider dropping his objections to a democratic vote, he would only do that if people in Scotland wanted one, which he apparently knows they don’t because the views of the millionaire businessmen he has sweaty mudbaths with in members-only clubs represent the will of the people much more accurately than the results of elections in which everyone over the age of sixteen is able to vote – even (gasp) the people who didn’t go to private schools.
Future generations will fall about in hysterics at the notion that Scotland could have had a referendum if only there had been any sign that the voters wanted one. It’s hard to think of any policy in modern British political history that has obtained such overwhelming popular assent at the ballot box, and so consistently over multiple consecutive elections. Pro-independence parties went to the people with manifesto commitments to a referendum in the 2016 Holyrood election, the 2017 Westminster election, the 2019 Westminster election, and the 2021 Holyrood election. On all four occasions they emerged with clear majorities and thus clear mandates for a referendum. It’s hard to imagine how many more consecutive times the voters would have to say exactly the same thing before Massie takes them seriously and notes the enthusiasm. Eight times? Fifteen times?
Of course what he really means is that he thinks opinion polls both do and should have a higher status under the British constitution than election results, but only on this one specific issue and on no other matters whatsoever. He also thinks that only opinion polls with the ‘right’ results should have this unique status, and that any polls with ‘wrong’ results, such as the Redfield & Wilton poll earlier this month showing that a majority want an independence referendum within the next twelve months, should be totally disregarded. That, I’m afraid, is the prescription for a banana republic, not for a country that regards itself as an advanced democracy.
Oh, and as for the idea that democracy consists of getting one day of choice which you’re then stuck with for the rest of your lives, good luck with the verdict of history on that one too, Alex.
