Looking forward on a day of sadness
I’m absolutely devastated. We nearly won. We could have won. But we didn’t.
We will respect the referendum result, which means we won’t declare independence without holding another referendum, and we cannot hold another referendum without exhausting the alternatives first.
I’m still trying to gather my thoughts, which is hard when you feel tired, sad and deflated. However, I’ve listed below a few thoughts about what will need to happen now. Please leave comments with more suggestions for the future!
- It’s completely clear to me that No only won because many voters got the impression we’d get Devo Max if we voted No. I’ve always been very cynical about this, but we now need to do out very best to achieve Devo Max (or Home Rule), and/or federalism in the UK.
- The Yes movement needs to be preserved in some form, primarily to guard over this journey towards Home Rule, but also — if the No side reneges on its promises — to campaign for a new referendum because the No side didn’t deliver. It would be unfortunate if this became a purely party-political matter again.
- The SNP should rename itself — the word “national” makes too many people jump to the conclusion that it’s deep down an ethnic nationalist party (which it isn’t). As I’ve argued before, “sovereigntist” would be a better word. It gets a bit tiring to state over and over again that the nationalists in Scotland aren’t nationalists.
- We need more media in Scotland to represent the views of the 45% who voted Yes to independence. If the BBC’s bias problems cannot be resolved (for instance by devolving broadcasting), we need to create a new Scottish broadcaster. We also need to convince more or the newspapers that it’s in their own commercial interest to cater for the younger, pro-independence audience.
- We need to work hard on getting rid of the Scottish cringe. It would have happened on its own after a Yes vote, but now it’ll be much harder. We need to keep showing people that Scotland is big enough, rich enough and clever enough to be in charge of its own destiny. We also need to make people understand that Scottish culture isn’t inferior, and I think working on promoting the Scots language would be very helpful in this context, because it would show Scottish people that the traditional language of Scotland is part of Scotland’s proud heritage.
I do hope the fact that 45% of voters supported independence will tell Westminster that something has to change. If 70% of voters had voted No, I’ve no doubt that Westminster would have thought it’d be a great opportunity to get rid of the Barnett formula and such things, but they must now be scared. They know they only won this referendum by the skin of their teeth.
I got an e-mail from 38 degrees asking me to sign a petition fot the promised powers to be give and quickly.
I made it clear that the promised powers were in my opinion not worth having and unsubscribed. I would.advise any Yesser who is a 38 degree member to do the same. Now that the gagging bill has come into force, they will be pretty hamstrung anyway.
I agree the promised powers are not worth having. My point is that we should ask for the powers that normal voters thought there were being promised.
More post referendum thoughts from Thomas. Looking forward on a day of sadness http://t.co/3ZYOGXwV04
Good points as usual Thomas. We definitely must keep going. There is so much to do. The Unionists promises may well have tipped the balance they must be held to account. Interesting point about the N in SNP. I have never joined the SNP, partly for this reason. Difficult to come up with anything else though. Sovereignty just does not work in English. We could also do with a more avowedly left wing party that was pro independence. Can the Socialist party re-invent themselves?
Thanks, Alister! I agree the Scottish Sovereigntist Party is hardly an improvement. Hmmm, it was clear to me during the campaign that Yes people were progressive and forward-looking, whereas No people were timid and conservative. Perhaps the Scottish Progressive Party would be a better name?
‘Scottish Independence Party’? ‘SSP’ is already taken by the Socialists. Approx 30% of all NO voters were over-65’s. Any way to ease fears of having pensions removed? It might help if Scotland actually had a solid national bank to put various economic worries to rest. I have a tenner.
@DougieMacM I agree, as I wrote on my blog: http://t.co/rBI7CMyQ6X
Lars Trap-Jensen liked this on Facebook.
Looking forward on a day of sadness | Arc of Prosperity http://t.co/TQlJOhAgx1
Disappointing but not a disaster. I think there needs to be a time of healing as well as debate about the constitutional changes that are coming across the whole of the UK. It’s not a time for acting out of bitterness or anger. I also think there should be a quick general election in Scotland now that Salmond has resigned as First Minister, otherwise his successor is going to have the same low level of legitimacy that Gordon Brown had, and Scotland needs to figure out who is going to lead the negotiations for the new constitutional arrangements in a co-operative way that respects the outcome of the referendum.
You cannot just call a new Scottish Parliament election.
And if you did, there would still be one in May 2016.
Anyway, I don’t really believe the constitutional changes will actually happen. I hope I’m wrong, though.
On the contrary, there now (suddenly) seems to be considerable momentum towards a federal UK.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Too many MPs and Lords have a vested interest in the status quo. I don’t think any real changes will pass the Houses of Parliament.
There will be no negotiations, at least from Scotland’s point of view. The chance for Scotland to be able to negotiate anything as a country was voted away on Thursday.
The “reforms” that will be delivered for England, will include stopping Scottish MPs voting on English matters, which only affects the Labour party. Tories only have one MP and SNP already don’t. So that change will put Labour in the same position on education, health etc in England as they would have been in had Scotland gone independent – i.e. they’ll lose those voices. The change Scotland will get will be massive cuts and reform of funding to make the Scottish government more unpopular due to having to implement the cuts.
How can any country vote away the ability to both run its own affairs and control its own vast amount of taxes and resources instead of giving it away for pocket money in return?
Looking forward on a day of sadness | Arc of Prosperity http://t.co/W1Szo5ybdN