In this extract from his new book, Inside The Indyref, Pete Wishart MP recounts the shock when, a little more than a week from polling day, an opinion poll was published showing Yes in the lead.
Sunday, September 7
IT has only gone and happened … This morning we have the first credible opinion poll showing Yes ahead. This is a massive moment and something we have all been hoping for if not praying to the indyref gods for.
It’s a small lead but a massive statement. If the referendum was to be held today, Yes would win.
All over Scotland, people involved in either campaign will be reading and rereading this dramatic twist in the indyref saga. The poll is for YouGov and was commissioned by the Sunday Times but most papers have it this morning. When the Don’t Knows are stripped out, Yes leads No by 51% to 49%.
Where everybody is excited and celebrating, the message is to keep focused and keep our feet firmly on the ground. “Whatever the detail of this poll, it is just that – a poll,” tweeted Nicola Sturgeon. “It’s the vote on 18/9 that counts so let’s redouble our efforts and stay focused.” I heard late last night that this was on its way and I could hardly believe it. This morning I still don’t know how we have got here.
Since the last debate, we’ve noted a change in the campaign – a growing intensity in the Yes vote, a new confidence and fortifying of those who support independence. The Yes case is beginning to spread like wildfire amongst communities everywhere in Scotland through conversations, with whole new cadres of Yes enthusiasts among the ordinary, predominately, working people of Scotland emerging.
This has gone largely undetected by the media but we’ve seen it building bit by bit to the point where it is spilling out and overflowing. This is a campaign that now belongs to the communities and people of Scotland and it has assumed a personality of its own.
All of a sudden, it feels like the metropolitan press and commentators have started to catch up with what’s going on and there is a lot of talk of the Union being on a “knife edge” and it simply being “too close to call”. In all the excitement, another opinion poll goes barely unnoticed. It’s from Panelbase, and almost ironically commissioned by Yes, and it shows us behind by four percentage points.
However, even here there is more comforting news – it shows the female vote, where Yes had lagged behind, once undecideds are stripped out, is almost equal at 47% and 48% respectively. The one main group that we have to convince are now becoming convinced of our case.
The response from the No side is almost immediate. The chancellor, George Osborne, is on the Marr show promising even more new powers, he even warbles something about a “devo-max” offer.
This is quite extraordinary and has never been mentioned before. Then we have the Scottish secretary in another broadcast interview talking more of a “timetable” rather than “more powers” itself. Later in the afternoon, it appears that this “more powers/devo-max” offer is going to be articulated by Gordon Brown.
“Devo-max” is all they have left. If they have sat around the table and hashed out a real devo-max offer which includes all powers other than defence, foreign affairs and multilateral relations, it might just make a difference but I doubt very much this is what they are suggesting at all.
The scale of their panic is also demonstrated by the fact that so many of our fellow countrymen have already voted by post. It has therefore been quite a day and you can almost sense the UK establishment limbering up to get fully involved in the debate. It’s going to be some week.
Before we sign out, there is a concern that this poll might just have come too early. The No side will now be energised knowing the scale of the task that now confronts them. There might also be a bit of complacency on our side with many believing that it is won. What we really need now is momentum. Another poll showing us ahead again then another showing us even further ahead.
We are now on the cusp of winning and the end of this campaign will be unlike anything we have witnessed in Scottish political life.
Monday, September 7
LEFT early to get down to Westminster today and it is spooked. Westminster MPs took for granted the repeated reassurance from the complacent group of Scottish Labour MPs.
The House of Commons thought that because there are only six SNP MPs out of the 59 MPs from Scotland, this was some sort of true reflection of the public mood. Very few took a real interest in the referendum, with most showing signs of irritation or even boredom on the few occasions it has been raised in the Commons.
The complacency meant they have failed to understand and appreciate what the debate has been about and they have responded as a singular Westminster “establishment” which only went to alienate the Scottish people further.
Today the British House of Commons is effectively paralysed. We have some fun asking points of order about these “more powers” and if there will be a statement which only adds to the House’s unease. My phone doesn’t stop ringing with metropolitan journalists wanting a quiet word and a briefing about what’s going on. If London thought they were going to have a quiet indyref, they have had the illusion shattered now.
In the evening we find out what these “new powers” are as articulated by Gordon Brown. Instead of using this opportunity to redefine their offer, we have nothing other than a timetable with absolutely no “new powers” on offer at all. Delivered from a miner’s club in Midlothian it is a timetable that promises either a commitment or a bill to be delivered by Burns Night.
In what is a fantastic speech delivered with a compelling passion rarely seen from the former chancellor, he hypes up this barren case as almost some sort of promised land.
The Nos still have a window to try and get on the front foot on this and I’m beginning to hear of all sorts of things about the Nos going much further in defining what a No vote will mean.
Tuesday, September 9
SUCH is the absolute blind panic that has now descended on Westminster that we hear that all the UK leaders will forsake Prime Minister’s Questions and journey up to Scotland instead to embark on a day of campaigning.
I raise a point of order in the House asking the Speaker when he was notified of this change. He told me “in the last two hours”, nailing the lie that this was always “planned”.
Westminster is in real peril of falling apart in panic and they are really going to have to steady their nerves. I’m not sure that dispatching the UK leaders to Scotland will do the trick for them though it will certainly lead to a lot more press attention for the No side. Going to be fascinating tomorrow.
Thursday, September 11
AFTER all this time, we are only a week away from the referendum and Scotland has almost descended into a carnival of politics. You can feel it in every community, it exists in every conversation and it is everywhere in this incredible nation of ours.
This is an amazing time in Scotland and you can feel history being shaped and played out. This morning about 100 English Labour MPs arrived by train in the most dramatic fashion to save the Union. Such is the great humour and incredible atmosphere, particularly in Glasgow, they were met by a man in a rickshaw and loudspeaker who was playing The Imperial March from Star Wars, shouting at a bemused group of Labour MPs and the Glasgow public: “People of Glasgow, bow down to your imperial masters, who have come from England to save the Union”.
Recognising several of my Labour colleagues, they just did not know what hit them. Welcome to Scotland, friends, it’s a bit like that just now.
Almost disastrously they then trooped up to the statue of Donald Dewar in Buchanan Street as a group lined up behind it, leaving them in a stand-off with a group of Yes supporters who “just happened” to be there. In the middle were all of the UK’s press and it descended into who could shout Yes or No loudest. Ed Miliband in attempting to speak to his troops just had a look of “what the ****”, before giving up.
The journalist Michael Deacon perhaps summed it up perfectly when he said the scenes were “ragingly hysterical” and “borderline psychotic”. Indeed.
Meanwhile, over in Edinburgh, Alex is hosting a press conference, notionally for the foreign press but with so much going on it inevitably becomes a press crucible. In an extraordinary exchange with the BBC’s Nick Robinson which quickly became an all-out assault from the BBC veteran, things started to get very heated. First there were shouts of “bias” as the first minister responded to a question about the consequences of the banks and businesses deserting Scotland.
Asking why men “responsible for billions of pounds of profits” should be ignored over the views of the first minister, Alex insisted RBS was just looking to move its “brass plate” and that any change of HQ would not have any impact on jobs or taxes.
Then in a cute move, the FM turned the tables on Robinson by brandishing a printout of a BBC website report that quoted Treasury sources revealing that RBS could move. Branding this a leak of “market sensitive information” which broke basic Treasury rules, he said: “I know that the BBC will want to cooperate with the inevitable investigation by the cabinet secretary”.
In the news later, Robinson reported that the FM didn’t answer his question when the FM spent seven minutes giving a more than fulsome response.
The BBC are now on the cusp of losing total trust in the referendum and there is real concern about the way that the metropolitan press has descended on Scotland and how they are covering the campaign. We know that none of these people are well disposed to Scottish independence and this is becoming very apparent in the way the referendum is being covered.
Tonight is the last of the “big” debates in the independence referendum and it is compelling viewing. Coming from the cavernous Hydro it is packed to the gunnels with 16- and 17-year-olds.
Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie represent Yes whilst Ruth Davidson and George Galloway were there for the Nos.
For some reason, Labour gave up their seat for the unpredictable Galloway and here he is sitting there looking like a very strange man in a hat.
Challenged about his comments on rape from Patrick Harvie, he almost lost it, then at the end he seemed to compare the SNP with Nazis. Repeatedly booed by the audience, it was a presentational disaster for the Nos that could only have moved many of them toward yes.
Incredible day in the indyref campaign – and there are still six to go.
