Lessons from 2014 for next time round
Speymouth
An important new academic book looking at the 2014 Scottish independence referendum has just been published. The snappily titled “Discourse, Voice, and the Politics of Participation in the Scottish Independence Referendum” by Dr Maike Dinger, a Lecturer in Communications, Media and Culture at the University of Stirling is available on Amazon for £104.99 hardback or £99.74 for the kindle edition so I doubt that there is going to be a stampede to the bookshops for it any time soon.
The high price of the book is a great pity, although such high prices are not unusual for academic books expected to have a limited readership, as it is hugely valuable for the broader independence movement to look at what lessons can be learned from 2014 in order to better our chances when the independence question is revisited, as it most assuredly will be sooner or later. Those who do not learn the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them, as the USA and Western governments are finding out with Trump’s ill-conceived war against Iran.
One issue clearly identified in Dr Dinger’s book is the one-dimensional portrayal of the referendum campaign by the media. The media almost entirely confined itself to a top down framing of the referendum, reflecting it through the lens of political party leaders and paying little attention to the burgeoning grassroots movement which blossomed across Scotland at the time.
Speaking to The National newspaper, Dr Dinger said it was “striking” how traditional media struggled to engage with grassroot organisers and “deferred to elite commentary” from politicians and experts.
She added: “Ordinary people and their thoughts and concerns hardly featured throughout much of the campaign. This is surprising as much of the official campaign focus was on the public from the very beginning. But the media focus only shifted during later phases of the campaign.”
I would suggest that this was very much a symptom of the political bias of the media in Scotland, above all the BBC. The Better Together campaign very clearly took the decision to frame the referendum in party political terms. We often heard the phrase “Alex Salmond’s referendum” which was a part of Better Together’s attempt to paint the referendum as an SNP referendum, not as a Scottish independence referendum. This was a very successful tactic for the Better Together campaign as it alienated a significant segment of the Scottish electorate from engaging with the arguments for independence due to their antipathy to the SNP as a political party. The message that an independent Scotland would be a democracy in which parties other than the SNP could form the government scarcely registered with such voters due to constant media framing of the referendum as an SNP event.
In this the media and the Better Together campaign were assisted by Alex Salmond’s then unchallenged dominance over the SNP and his strong, forceful, and polarising character.
This is a tactic which the anti-independence parties and the British media in Scotland have continued to employ in the years since the referendum. They still frame independence as an SNP issue while in a travesty of democracy votes for other pro-independence parties are not held to count. This was seen most clearly following the Scottish elections of 2021 when the SNP and the Scottish Greens won a substantial majority of Holyrood seats in an election which was dominated by the issue of a second independence referendum only for the anti-independence parties which lost that election to insist that the Scottish Parliament did not in fact have a mandate for a second independence referendum. Their gaslighting was enabled by a Scottish media which to its eternal shame failed in its basic duty to defend democracy and paid mere lip service to asking the Labour and Conservatives to specify the democratic route to another referendum.
The tactic of framing indyref 2 as an “SNP referendum” will still be very much to the fore the second time around. This time however, the recent decoupling of support for independence from support for the SNP can very much play to our advantage as can the absence from the SNP leadership of a dominant marmite love him or loathe him leader like Alex Salmond.
Also, next time round we will be under no illusions about the bias of the BBC. We will go into the referendum campaign braced for anti-independence bias from the BBC and can shape our campaign accordingly.
The first indyref campaign was marked by a couple of unforced errors by Alex Salmond which still dog us today. The first of these was his policy of a currency union with the rest of the UK following independence. This policy effectively handed the Better Together campaign a veto over a key part of the economic prospectus for an independent Scotland, a veto which they enthusiastically employed, leading to ludicrous scare stories that on day one after a yes vote, Scotland would have no usable currency at all. It also left us with the “What currency will you use?” trope which still hangs around to this day. Next time round the independence campaign needs a clear, simple, and plausible answer to this question which does not allow any room for a Westminster veto. My own preference is to unilaterally continue to use Sterling as a transitional currency before introducing a new Scottish currency as quickly as possible.
The other error only became apparent after the vote was lost, that was the “once in a generation” rhetoric which has hung like a millstone around our necks ever since 2014. It’s not entirely fair to blame Alex Salmond for this, as it was a slogan designed to boost participation in a vote which he entirely expected to win. You can’t really blame him for not preparing to fail. But fail he did and we are left to pick up the pieces. That slogan was abused by the anti-independence parties after they won as a get out of jail free card which prevented them being held to account for all the many broken promises of their own.
The other key questions to which we need clear answers are pensions and the border. These answers must be simple and able to be communicated in easy to remember sound bites. The border question is more salient now that the UK is out of the EU and Scotland will seek at a minimum to join EFTA if not rejoin the EU.
The biggest difference next time round however will be the inability of Better Together Mk II to make any promises about what Scotland will be offered by Westminster in return for a No vote. Their credibility has been well and truly shot by their lies and betrayals from 2014. There will be no promises of federalism in three years or Devo Max. This means that we will be in for a barrage of hysterical and over the top scare stories unleavened by any bribes. We need to be prepared for that.
However the biggest difference between 2014 and the next time is that we are going into the campaign with a majority for independence already. Support for independence was far behind in polling when the campaign kicked off in 2013. Next time the advantage is ours and we will be facing an anti-independence campaign which has hamstrung itself by depriving itself of the ability to mount a positive campaign. That’s why next time round we are going to win.
___________________________________
The annual blog fundraiser has reached its initial target but will keep running for a few weeks more. The initial target represented the bare minimum necessary to keep the blog going. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed. There are a number of ways to donate. You can contribute to my fundraiser on GoFundMe, the link is here.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/wee-ginger-dug-annual-fundraiser-2026
By Default GoFundMe has configured the donation page to monthly donations. You can still donate as a one off When you Click donate, on the donate page under the title WeeGinger Fundraiser 2026 you’ll see two buttons, one on the left saying GIVE ONCE and one on the right saying GIVE MONTHLY. This seems to be a new thing with GoFundMe. Click the left GIVE ONCE button so it is highlighted in Green then choose the amount you want to donate or enter it in the box below. If not, you can always make a one off donation by PayPal or Ko-Fi
You can donate via Ko-Fi here:
Or click the following link https://ko-fi.com/weegingerdug
One of the easiest ways to support this blog is with a PayPal donation. Please log into Paypal.com and send a payment to the email address [email protected]. Or alternatively click the donate button below. If you don’t have a PayPal account, just select “donate with card” after clicking the button. You can also donate by PayPal by using my PayPal.me link PayPal.Me/weegingerdug
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/weegingerdug
If you would prefer to donate some other way, for example by bank transfer or cheque, please contact me at [email protected] for details. Once again, thank you to everyone for your support.