Richard Walker: The top four arguments against independence – debunked

All the signs are that those determined to stop Scotland gaining control over its own future are already engaged in an onslaught of fake news and blatant untruths with which to bamboozle voters.

This week’s first TV election debate gave a sneak preview of the arguments which will be deployed in the Scottish election campaign and beyond. The Tories’ leader in Scotland, Douglas Ross, gave a performance so bad that even his fellow Unionists were embarrassed – but he did manage to string together a few sentences that revealed his lines of attack.

So, here are the top four arguments against independence that we can identify so far … and why they are all rubbish.

1. The referendum is a distraction (because we’ve never heard of 
multi-tasking)

The Tories will throw everything at convincing voters that the desire for a second referendum soaks up valuable resources and mind space that would be better spent in running the country. Specifically Douglas Ross mentioned the NHS, the economic recovery from Covid and poverty, which he said the Government could not even talk about in the absence of legislation to tackle it. Unfortunately for Ross, Nicola Sturgeon came to the debate equipped with the evidence needed to rebuff the charges. The Scottish Government had offered NHS workers a 4% pay rise, compared to the 1% “insult” the Tories were prepared to stump up south of the Border.

The Scottish Government were absolutely working to promote the economic recovery, evidenced by a year’s holiday from business rates and arrangements to successfully encourage local authorities to freeze the council tax. And there was also the Scottish Child Payment aimed to tackling child poverty.

Douglas Ross, of course, was having none of it, and when faced with the evidence that he was talking nonsense, he simply spoke louder over the top of the First Minister in the forlorn hope that no-one would be able to hear her. It’s doubtful whether this tactic will work for long but it seems to be the only one the Tory leader has.

Multi-tasking appeared to be something Ross had never considered. But then the only two leaders in the debate who supported independence were women and so it was no surprise they were the only ones who considered the possibility of doing more than one thing at a time (I’ve been told to say that).

2. The referendum is divisive (repeat every five minutes)
Douglas Ross used this ruse to turn every question in the TV debate – no matter it’s initial subject matter – into a question on independence. Even a discussion on the unfortunate modern tendency to indulge in online abuse became about the “toxic atmosphere” caused by the “divisive” referendum.
If you follow that logic to its natural conclusion, we’d never have a general election because the supporters of the different parties all, you know, disagree.

People who have passionately held beliefs often argue with other people who have other passionately held beliefs. Get over it. Yes, sometimes that gets nasty and that’s very much to be regretted. Nasty people get nasty over all sorts of things and not all of them political.

Ironically this discussion came closest to establishing cross-party agreement that abuse needed to be called out whenever it was found, whoever was indulging in it. Cross-party, that is, apart from the Conservatives, when Ross saw another opportunity to make a cheap point by suggest abuse was all the fault of independence supporters.

Consensus was restored when Labour leader Anas Sarwar told Ross to “grow up”.
Anyone who took part in the Yes campaign leading up to 2014 will remember that time as largely good natured and certainly energising, as the debate engaged thousands for whom politics had previously been a crashing bore. Many politicians and political commentators prefer it when the mythical “ordinary people” don’t challenge their opinion and actions and find it all very “divisive” when they do. Which brings us to …

3. Ordinary people don’t care about the referendum
This is the signature number of Anas Sarwar, who has decided to tear up the Better Together Unionist coalition rule book. Not for him, sharing a platform with the Tories and taking the lead from Westminster figures. For Labour in Scotland, the penny has finally dropped that backing a profoundly undemocratic block on another referendum FOREVER is not a good look.

Unfortunately it hasn’t dropped enough to allow the party – and certainly not its election candidates – to even countenance supporting independence.

So the challenge facing Sarwar is what line to take on indyref2 once you rule out backing Boris Johnson, and obviously can’t stomach Douglas Ross. The answer seems to be: no line at all. Sarwar thinks that by consigning the independence debate to the dark days of … oh, last year … he is freed up to embrace fresh, new territory such as the class struggle.

Labour’s fresh, new leader wants to move away from divisions such as Yes/No and Brexiteer/Remainer and back to the things that matter to “ordinary people”. Which seemingly means leaving the power to really drive the Covid recovery to the Tories in Westminster. Because they are obviously going to heed his call to “bring the country together” and will absolutely turn their backs on handing out lucrative Covid contracts to their best buds (cough) Barnard Castle (cough).

People don’t care? More than 20 successive opinion polls beg to differ.

4. Now is not the time

This isn’t exactly a new one, although its been pressed back into service by Boris Johnson in recent weeks. It’s otherwise known as “it will never be time for a referendum but I really can’t be arsed talking about it so I’ll just shut you up with any old excuse”. It was first wheeled out by Theresa May in 2017 after Nicola Sturgeon demanded another vote between autumn 2018 and spring 2019.

It wasn’t the time then, said May, because it would jeopardise the UK’s negotiations with the EU over Brexit. It wasn’t the time after Brexit because …well, it was all too chaotic.
Boris Johnson departed from the script last year when he more or less suggested it would never be the time.

He’s back on board now, though, because Covid and the need for recovery mean that once again it’s not the time.

There are two facts which prove it very much is the time. First, Westminster can hardly be trusted to plan the Covid recovery. Boris Johnson planned Brexit and made sure that Scotland had no input in the process and no chance of having any of its ideas implemented.

Brexit was a Westminster construct and look what a pig’s ear it made of it.
Secondly, it will be the time for another referendum when the Scottish people decide it’s the time and there’s nothing Westminster can do about it. Just because it passed a Section 30 agreement for the 2014 referendum doesn’t mean that same procedure has to be followed for every referendum.

We’ll see these spurious four Unionist arguments wheeled out again and again in the run up to the May elections. They don’t make sense, but Union supporters hope that if they repeat them often, enough people will accept them as fact. Let’s not allow that to happen.