Last week Jim Murphy, the Labour frontbencher, suspended what was meant to be a 100-day speaking tour of Scotland. Mr Murphy gave his summer over to travelling across the country, evangelising for the Union atop a soapbox. Yet he claims he was faced with a “mob atmosphere” that was deliberately engineered by nationalists.
The treatment of Mr Murphy should not be trivialised. He has been shouted down by cohorts of nationalist campaigners and pelted with eggs. His staff are using the period before Mr Murphy’s tour resumes to receive training in personal protection. Orchestrated virulence has been the preserve of the “yes” camp, but there is rising anger on both sides. Last week, Alex Salmond’s office called the police when his car was tailgated by an irate unionist. Electoral authorities are now considering having a significant police presence at polling stations on the day of the referendum.
Non-Scots will find this ugly turn bemusing. There is something distinctly un-British about violent clashes at the ballot box. (Nationalists might claim that that is precisely their point.) But it would be wrong to understand the “yes” vote merely through the prism of the harassment of Mr Murphy. YouGov’s poll for this newspaper in July showed an 18-point lead in favour of the Union. A poll today has narrowed the gap to six points. Two trends explain this shift. First, undecided voters are moving to the “yes” side by a ratio of two to one. Second, the percentage of Labour supporters intending to vote yes has risen dramatically, from 13 per cent to 30.
The second of these two phenomena is particularly instructive. Much support for the “yes “ camp rests on the belief that an independent Scotland would be more left-wing than the United Kingdom. Mr Salmond has decried the prevalence of food banks in Scotland, calling it “unacceptable” in “a country as prosperous as Scotland”. He has repeatedly asserted that unless Scotland votes to leave the Union, its health service will be privatised. On foreign policy, he has bent to popular concerns about interventionism by pledging that all nuclear weapons would be removed from Scotland within four years, while bashing Conservative Euroscepticism.
In fact, it is not especially clear what a post-independence Scottish party system would look like. The Scottish National party is defined and united by its nationalism, but by little else. Scottish Conservatism, a spent force at Westminster, fares better in Holyrood elections. Nonetheless, it is evidently true that the centre of political gravity in Scotland is further to the left than in England. It is this that is attracting Labour voters to independence. Many do not believe themselves to be nationalists, but like the idea of living in a more left-wing country.
Advertisement
This should worry unionists, and particularly Labour unionists. Mr Salmond is adroitly confecting a coalition comprising those opposed to various aspects of the status quo. And just as Mr Salmond is building his coalition, the unionist coalition is fracturing. If Better Together hopes to stem the defections of leftwingers to the nationalist side, it must emphasise what Scotland could lose by choosing “yes”. Most pertinently, it needs to remind these voters, flirting with a dreamy socialist idyll, that a “yes” victory could entail a future with less government money, not more.
It is not all bad news for unionists, however. While YouGov’s poll shows that the referendum result might be close, it still shows a lead for the “no” campaign. Mr Salmond has often attacked his opponents for lacking a positive case, but he could now use one of his own. Tapping into the grievances of small groups will give unionists a bloody nose, but little more. Without a coherent vision for what a “yes” would entail, six points from independence may be as close as he deserves to get.