The sound of the beat(en)

Tomorrow, the UK goes to the polls, and the union has arguably never been more divided. In the last five years, the poor have got poorer, the rich have got richer, the press have gleefully turned the "deserving" against the "undeserving", all three major Westminster parties (in hoc to the UKIP-set agenda) have stoked the flames of xenophobia with their anti-immigration rhetoric, and a little matter known as the 2014 Scottish independence referendum has dragged into the spotlight many of the long-festering tensions that exist both within and between the union's various constituent nations. The old adage goes that how Scotland votes has no impact on the outcome of UK-wide elections. Well, this time round, a perfect storm of factors have come together to make this one the exception to the rule. And surprise surprise, the establishment doesn't like the thought of the tail wagging the dog.

When the main unionist parties -- the Tories, Labour and the Lib Dems -- united under a single banner to deny Scotland its independence -- a small number of commentators made the prescient observation that Labour had put itself in a lose-lose situation. By aligning itself with the Tories, it left much of its core vote appalled and disgusted, and found itself having to effectively defend Tory policy, selling the current settlement -- with its NHS privatisation, food banks, nuclear weapons, illegal wars and austerity -- as preferable to going it alone. After being widely photographed dancing and cheering with the Tories as they celebrated their pyrrhic victory, Labour was thrust straight into a general election campaign in which it found itself having to do battle with the very party with whom it had happily stood shoulder to shoulder just weeks earlier. The incompatibility of these positions was laid bare for all to see. During the referendum campaign, for instance, Labour poo-pooed the idea that privatisation of the English NHS could have any impact on Scotland's health service and claimed that the NHS was "safe with a no vote". Mere weeks later, they were singing an entirely different tune as they desperately tried to convince Scottish voters to back them once again:

Before:

 After:

For years, Scottish voters accepted as gospel the mantra of "vote SNP, get Tories". Throughout the campaign, Labour has stuck doggedly to the line that only they can prevent another Tory government, conveniently ignoring the fact that, in every general election since 1955, Scotland DID vote Labour and ended up with the Tories anyway a full 7 out of 14 times (including 2010, when Labour's vote share in Scotland actually went UP even as it plummeted elsewhere). This time round, all the polls point to the electorate having stopped listening. The unionist parties believed that defeat in the independence referendum would hobble the SNP irrevocably, and yet the exact opposite seems to have happened. To put the SNP surge into perspective, in 2010 they won 6 seats to Labour's 41. In 2015, the question is not whether the SNP will increase their share of the vote but whether they will wipe Labour out completely or merely cut their share of seats to single figures.

The wildest estimates suggest the SNP taking the whole lot, i.e. 59 out of 59 seats. Personally I don't think that's likely, and bitter experience has taught me not to set myself up for disappointment by having unrealistic expectations, but I do think 50+ is within the realms of possibility (and would be the highest share of the vote ever achieved by any party in Scotland). Of course, anything over 11 is record-beating, anything over 12 is the SNP doubling their current number, and anything over 30 is an absolute majority.

I'm in the strange situation of utterly despairing at the state of the union and its politics and yet looking forward to tomorrow night with a sense of unbridled glee. That the SNP could perform a clean sweep on between 45% and 55% of the vote shows how utterly broken, inadequate and undemocratic the awful First Past the Post system is, but that's the system Miliband, Brown, Cameron et al pleaded with us not to reject last September, and if it was good enough for them when things were going their way, then it should be good enough for them now. (The irony, of course, is that many of the voices who will be shrieking the loudest about the iniquity of it all should the SNP wipe the board will be the same ones who so vociferously defended it in 2011 during the AV referendum.)

I really don't care whether Labour or the Tories win the most seats across the UK, for the simple reason that it doesn't really matter all that much. That's not because I think the two parties are almost completely interchangeable (though that much is certainly true) but rather because, unless every single pollster is wildly out, the arithmetic is such that no party will be left with a majority, and regardless of all the demented "the largest party gets to form the government" posturing from Labour, the Tories and their media chums, the reality is that being able to win a vote of confidence in the Commons is what matters. The simple fact is that, with the SNP -- this year's kingmakers -- refusing the support the Tories under any circumstances, the only person who can prevent Labour forming the next government is Ed Miliband himself, and something tells me that, regardless of his current posturing, there is no way he's going to risk the ire that would come his way should he hand the keys to David Cameron for another five years rather than work with the centre-left, socially progressive SNP. I expect the horse-trading over the next couple of weeks to be brutal and messy, but it's ultimately what matters, rather than whether the Tories end up with fractionally more seats than Labour, or vice versa.

I'm going to stay up until I can't keep my eyes open any longer, keeping track of the results as they come in, probably listening to NewsShaft's coverage rather than going with the BBC, ITV or any of the other usual suspects. There are many "big hitters" whose defeats I will relish immensely should they come to pass: Anas Sarwar, Margaret Curran, Ian Davidson, Douglas Alexander, and my own crook of a Lib Dem MP, Jo "photo op" Swinson. I have the following queued up, ready to be played loud out often throughout the night:

Beam me up, Scottie!

The Herald has released pictures of the interior of the soon-to-be-completed South Glasgow University Hospital, set to be one of the largest hospital complexes in Europe. I'm sure I can't be the only one who immediately thought of JJ Abrams' STAR TREK reboot when I saw them:

All kidding aside, it looks very impressive, and a massive improvement over the dingy old Western Infirmary, in whose A&E department I've spent the occasional evening over the years.

Where the Yes campaign went wrong

As the dust continues to settle in the aftermath of the independence referendum, the inevitable post mortems into both campaigns are well under way. I definitely don't want to sell the Yes campaign's achievements short, and while I appreciate that there's no such thing as a consolation prize for coming second in a two horse race, convincing 45% of the electorate to vote for independence, in the face of the most relentless bombardment of threats, scare stories, false promises and emotional manipulation I've ever witnessed, and with 99% of the mainstream media arraigned against it, is no small feat. To put that into perspective, if the referendum was held again tomorrow, only 1 in 20 of those who voted No would be required to change their vote in order to secure a Yes victory. As Alex Salmond put it the day after the vote, it's more productive to concentrate not on how far we fell short, but on how far we've travelled. When the referendum was originally announced, support for Yes stood at between 25 and 30%. On the day of the vote, we were only 5% short of victory. In other words, in the space of just over two years, we covered between three and four times the ground now required to close the gap in a hypothetical future referendum. That's amazing.

That said, I think it's safe to say that there were areas in which the Yes campaign's approach couldn't help but contribute to the defeat, and I'd like to focus on that in this rather long-winded piece. I'm not going to talk about the obvious stuff that was beyond our control -- e.g. the aforementioned media bias and the UK government's blatant abuses of its position, for instance using the Scotland Office to brief against independence in the international arena. I'm also not going to go into specific policy issues such as currency, which I feel weren't particularly well handled, due in no small part to the fact that we were essentially locked into the SNP's White Paper script on these issues whether or not we agreed with it. Instead, I want to focus on a handful of broad areas in which I feel the Yes campaign made mistakes that could have been avoided.



The echo chamber effect

Yes undoubtedly dominated social media, but I think some of us mistook online dominance for universal dominance. Wings Over Scotland, Newsnet Scotland, Wee Ginger Dug, Bella Caledonia... they were brilliant for deconstructing the propaganda issued by the No campaign and/or the press, they gave Yessers ample opportunity to talk to one another, and I'm of no doubt that they reached and "converted" a great many people who would otherwise have voted No. But they failed to reach a great swathe of people who never go on the internet, or at least never venture further afield than a handful of mainstream (and therefore most likely No-friendly, if they took any stance in the debate) pages. Days before the vote, there were people on Facebook and Twitter claiming that it was clear Yes was going to win 70:30 on account of the much bigger online Yes presence. Many of these are, I suspect, the same people who are now indulging in far-fetched conspiracy theories about vote-rigging and widespread electoral fraud.

A few days before the vote, I said, based on my own subjective impressions, that "Scotland doesn't feel to me like a nation that's about to vote against its own self-determination." Replace "Scotland" with "Glasgow", and you'd be right. Glasgow voted Yes by majority, and my perception of the state of play was, not unsurprisingly, primarily based on the feeling on the ground in Glasgow. If you weren't there, it's very difficult to describe with words the feeling of being in Glasgow's city centre in the week leading up to the vote. I've never taken drugs, but I reckon likening it to a great acid trip is the best way to explain it. The whole atmosphere was one of light-headed euphoria, with spontaneous gatherings of hundreds of people singing in the streets, George Square occupied for days on end by people partying and waving flags... Even the arrival of a hundred Labour troughers to attempt to convince us to vote No took on a carnivalesque air thanks to a guy in a rickshaw who pursued them all the way from Central Station to the top of Buchanan Street playing the Imperial March from STAR WARS. It really felt like we were on the cusp of a glorious, irreverent, peaceful revolution.

So in a way my perception was accurate, but it failed to take into account the bigger picture, i.e. what was happening across Scotland as a whole. I doubt there were too many people in the Borders engaging in hundreds-strong impromptu renditions of Caledonia and Flower of Scotland, for example. The success in Glasgow was mirrored only in three other constituencies: North Lanarkshire, West Dunbartonshire and Dundee, and the fact that these are among the largest in terms of population was still not enough to swing the vote in Yes's favour.


The "scary radicals" factor

The Yes campaign was admirably inclusive, bringing together nationalists, internationalists, socialists, environmentalists, feminists, trade unionists, human rights activists, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Scottish-born Scots, Italian Scots, English Scots, Asian Scots... in other words, people from pretty much every walk of life. I've heard it mentioned that some members of the world's press who descended on Scotland in the week ahead of the vote came expecting to find something similar to Golden Dawn or some other sort of neo-fascist movement, and were bewildered to discover people of every creed, colour, gender and background united under the broad Yes banner.

Still, in one respect, there was a broad level of consensus: Yes was very much a left-wing movement, and one that made Tory-bashing part of its daily rhetoric. The chief executive of Yes Scotland, Blair Jenkins, specifically stated that one of the best reasons he could think of to vote Yes was so we would never have to endure another Tory government ever again. As inclusive as Yes might have been, it nonetheless immediately excluded a substantial minority of the electorate: the comfortably off, socially conservative upper middle class who, rather than being filled with hope when hearing talk of wealth redistribution and a root-and-branch restructuring of the economy, were instead filled with dread and focused not on what those worse off than themselves might stand to gain but rather what they themselves might stand to lose. True, the SNP's official proposals, as laid out in the White Paper, were relatively conservative, edging the country's economic and social structures towards a Nordic-style social democratic model without doing anything particularly revolutionary, but every one of the most prominent voices that made up the grassroots campaign -- from Tommy Sheridan to Cat Boyd to Robin McAlpine to Lesley Riddoch -- was calling for revolution, not evolution. The Yes campaign lacked a prominent centre-right conservative voice, which could have reached out to the sort of people that were never going to give the likes of Common Weal or the Radical Independence Campaign the time of day.

Similarly, though not unrelated as there is some definite overlap in terms of demographics, the Yes campaign failed spectacularly to engage a majority of the elderly. The polling by Michael Ashcroft on the night of the referendum makes for sobering reading, suggesting that fewer than 30% of people over the age of 60 voted Yes. In fact, if those over 60 had been excluded from voting, then according to the Ashcroft figures, Yes would have won. In some respects, this was always going to be a tough nut to crack: the over-60s are the only generation that have any widespread residual sense of Britishness, and there's not much you can do to persuade someone of the benefits of independence when the very concept is an anathema to them. However, I think any future pro-independence campaign would have to look long and hard at how to reach older voters, because it seems pretty clear that it failed spectacularly in that regard. Relating back to the echo chamber issue, the majority of people above a certain age get their information from traditional sources, i.e. newspapers and the BBC. These people weren't, by and large, popping on to Facebook or Wings Over Scotland to see the Daily Record's latest scare story being debunked. For the most part, they were only hearing one narrative, and it was the unionist one.

How do you deal with that problem in future? Well, the most morbid answer is that this demographic not going to be around indefinitely, but I think most would agree that something more proactive needs to be done than simply waiting for a certain proportion of the electorate to shuffle off the mortal coil. I don't have any definitive answers here -- I'm simply flagging it up as an issue that needs to be tackled.


The Salmond effect

Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are, by a country mile, the most popular political figures in Scotland. They have approval ratings that other UK politicians can only dream of. However, there's no denying that Salmond is a marmite figure. While a great many people respect and admire him, a great many also loathe him with a passion. Particularly in the Labour party ranks, blind hatred of the SNP in general and Salmond in particular is endemic, and I was shocked by how many people I encountered who articulated only a single reason for voting No: "Because ah can't stand that Alex Salmond." The media and the No campaign (and I really should stop referring to these as two separate entities) capitalised on this by seeking to portray the Yes campaign as Salmond's personal vanity project, focusing on him to the exclusion of virtually every other player (except perhaps Nicola Sturgeon) and essentially conducting a two and a half year long character assassination. And I suspect, incidentally, that they'd have been even more effective if they'd been able to unearth some skeletons from his past. The fact that, as far as we can tell, Salmond's personal life is squeaky clean to the point of being boring must have been a continual source of frustration for the No campaign's spin doctors. I'm actually surprised we didn't see some sort of fabricated "Salmond kicks puppies" scandal in the final days of the campaign.

It's easy to demonise a single figurehead. This was harder to do with the No campaign because it was like a Hydra. While Alistair Darling was nominally the head of the campaign, in truth plenty of other figures ratcheted up as much screen time as him, or more. Particularly in the final stages of the campaign, following his crushing defeat by Salmond in the second of two televised debates, Darling was sidelined almost completely, with the likes of Jim Murphy and Gordon Brown enjoying far higher profiles. It was far harder to run the sort of campaign against them that was run against Salmond, because frankly you'd have had to discredit at least a dozen of them. While that wouldn't be too hard in the case of Darling (i.e. the man who was in charge of the Treasury during the crash of 2008, who flipped his home four times to abuse the MPs' expenses system, and who somehow made the transition from Trotskyite radical to being warmly applauded as a guest speaker at the Conservative Party conference) the likes of Brown -- nasty, venal man though he is -- still inexplicably command a great deal of support and admiration from Labour supporters in Scotland. While to a certain extent it was the media that focused unrelentingly on Alex Salmond, I suspect the Yes campaign could have done more to push other, less divisive figures into the spotlight. This matter does need to be looked at, because in the hypothetical case of another referendum, I would imagine the press and Westminster parties will, given the opportunity, simply do to Nicola Sturgeon what they did to Salmond.


The smile factor

The No campaign's success proves one thing: fear works. If you bombard people with scare stories about their pensions, currency, EU membership status and even the bloody BBC every day for two and a half years, then a significant number will be brow-beaten into submission. Alex Salmond repeatedly claimed that the only way a negative campaign could win was if the opposition was equally negative. The result gives lie to this idea. Many of us on the Yes side spent a great deal of time laughing at the No campaign for constantly trotting out the same debunked scare stories regarding pensions, EU membership and the NHS, but the truth is that these scare stories were carefully chosen and deployed for maximum impact. As Alex Salmond put it in a speech in his constituency shortly after the referendum, frightening old people is a cheap, nasty thing to do, but it's not hard. The No campaign was the epitome of cheap and nasty, but it worked.

The Yes campaign spent a great deal of time on the defensive, rebutting the No campaign's threats and scare stories without offering up any of their own. It was only in the final weeks that the Yes side finally went on the offensive with a "scare story" (I use quotes because what they were warning about was and is very real, in stark contrast to much of the utter bilge Better Together spewed out) of its own: the threat of a No vote to the Scottish NHS. I think the official Yes campaign tried too hard to replicate the template the SNP harnessed in their 2007 and 2011 election campaigns to such great effect, setting out their stall on the basis of can-do positivism in the face of their opponents' can't-do negativity, but this wasn't an election and they shouldn't have assumed the same rules would apply.

I think the Yes movement can be proud of its campaign for a great many reasons, not least the fact that for the most part it refused to stoop to the level of its opponents. However, the unfortunate truth is that, if your opponent goes around telling lies about you and calling you every name under the sun, it does you little good to behave like a perfect gentleman, smile and say "I love you too." With the odds stacked so highly against it, the Yes campaign needed to be willing to fight dirty. I lost count of the number of times it seemed that, in interviews and debates, Yes representatives appeared to miss open goals out of a desire to appear "nice" and "reasonable". I'm sorry, but when the people you're up against include proven liars, war criminals and expenses cheats, who describe you as "a virus", Nazis and "not genetically programmed to make political decisions", who are willing to tell the elderly and the terminally ill that their pensions will be cut off and that they will be ineligible for organ transplants in the event of a Yes vote, then "nice" and "reasonable" go out the window.


That's about all I've got to say on the subject, for the time being. Obviously, this is still a raw wound for me, and there's little to be achieved by playing out an endless series of what-ifs. Still, I very much hope we're going to get a second bite of the cherry sooner rather than later, and if/when we do, it won't do us any good if we just make the same mistakes all over again. So let's be proud of what we did right, but realistic about what we did wrong, and start figuring out NOW rather than at the last minute what we're going to do differently next time.

What now?

I've deliberately avoided writing about the Scottish independence issue for the last week or so. I spent most of the weekend following the referendum feeling numb, angry and completely hopeless, with the double whammy of losing the vote followed shortly afterwards by Alex Salmond's snap decision not to stand for re-election as leader of the SNP in November leaving me devastated. (And how galling it was to watch the man who'd safeguarded our NHS, delivered free prescriptions, university tuition and care for the elderly announcing his resignation, while war criminals, expenses frauds and proven liars smirked and patted themselves on the back.) I wanted to take some time to let my emotions settle and to mull over the main question that must be on every single pro-independence campaigner's mind -- namely "What now?"

It seems reasonable to suggest that the independence movement will not go quietly into the night. In fact, I've been surprised by just how quickly so many people came to terms with the crushing despair of having lost the referendum and immediately began to regroup, speculating as to what the next step should be for the movement. It will undoubtedly change in terms of its immediate goals and tactics, but the long term aim -- independence for Scotland -- remains firmly on the agenda. It certainly remains my aim, though I'm pragmatic enough to assume that, at present, it's off the menu for at least a few years. The people have spoken, and all that. Many of them may have been cajoled, intimidated and deceived into voting No, but vote No they did, and as democrats we have to accept (I almost typed "respect", but decided against it) the result.

That said, I was intrigued that Nicola Sturgeon, when launching her bid for leadership of the SNP (and there can be little doubt that she'll succeed, given that so far no-one has come forward to challenge her, with every other potential candidate giving her their backing), refused to rule out calling another referendum in the future. It would be absurdly unwise for the SNP to go into the next election with the promise of another referendum in their manifesto -- I expect they would be slaughtered at the ballot box by an electorate that's had its fill of rederenda after two and a half years of argument -- but keeping it on standby as a potential weapon to whip out in the event of a dramatic change of circumstances is a wise move.

What would constitute such a change of circumstances? Well, for one thing, the three Westminster parties reneging on the vows they dreamt up on the back of a fag packet in the final weeks of the campaign. For another, the looming EU in/out referendum the Conservatives are promising in 2017. If a scenario were to emerge whereby England voted by majority to leave the EU and Scotland voted by majority to remain (as the polls tend to suggest), then in my view the Scottish Government would be entirely justified in calling a snap independence referendum on the grounds that the tectonic plates had shifted. And they'd probably win it comfortably.

In the meantime, the SNP's immediate goal appears to be holding Westminster to account over the grandiose promises it made in the run-up to the vote. The words "DevoMax" and "federalism" were trotted out several times -- words with specific meanings, but which both the politicians and the media cynically used to make what they were offering sound more impressive than it actually was. "DevoMax", for the avoidance of any doubt, means maximum devolution, i.e. full control of all matters except defence and foreign affairs. Nothing the three Westminster parties have offered (and all are proposing different packages, with Labour's by far the most feeble) comes even remotely close to fulfilling those criteria, but DevoMax we were promised, so DevoMax we will demand. There can be little doubt that Sturgeon will be all too willing to remind them of the language they used when the negotiations begin.

Apparently, in the most recent issue of the Sun on Sunday, David Cameron stated a desire to give Scotland the power to raise and spend all its own money. I have my doubts that he really means this, as it would mean saying goodbye to all those lovely oil revenues. However, let's take these comments at face value for a moment. Realistically speaking, Cameron has little to lose by offering Scotland as much autonomy as possible. There is, after all, only a single Tory MP north of the border, so in a sense Scotland is already a write-off from the Conservative Party's point of view. Any significant transfer of powers would undoubtedly mean reducing Scotland's presence at a UK parliamentary level to compensate, but something tells me Cameron wouldn't lose much sleep over axing a single MP. On the other hand Labour, with its 40 Scottish MPs (at least until the 2015 general election), has far more to lose, which probably explains why Labour's devolution proposals are so toothless. Indeed, Cameron's "English votes for English laws" drive, announced the morning after the referendum in his victory speech, looks more and more like a cunning trap laid for Ed Miliband and his party.

(Incidentally, I have absolutely no problem with the idea of "English votes for English laws", and indeed I commend the SNP's Westminster MPs for adopting the principled stance of not voting on matters that are devolved to the Scottish parliament. That said, there are certain caveats, the most significant one being that the budget Scotland receives is set by Westminster, and a situation could potentially arise whereby Scottish MPs are unable to vote on motions that impact on the Scottish budget.)

Allow me some pie-in-the-sky thinking for a moment. Imagine a scenario by which the UK moved to a truly federal settlement whereby each of the four nations was completely financially autonomous. If such a situation came to pass, then in many respects the question of independence becomes a moot point. I'm not a hard line Scottish nationalist, and wouldn't have too much of a problem with the idea of a union called the United Kingdom continuing in some form, provided Scotland was allowed to govern its own affairs within that union. The only downside (and it is a major one, I admit) is that it does nothing to extricate us from the UK's disastrous foreign policy or resolve the presence of nuclear warheads just miles from our most populous city. That's why, at the end of the day, while I would take DevoMax or federalism as the next best thing, it's still a lesser alternative to true independence, which I believe must remain the ultimate goal. For the time being, though, I believe the immediate task must be to, as Alex Salmond put it, "hold Westminster's feet to the fire" and ensure that they deliver on their promises.

Crucial to this is going to be getting as many pro-independence MPs sent to Westminster in the 2015 general election as possible. Scotland currently has 59 MPs, of whom a mere six are SNP. The rest consist of 40 Labour, 11 Liberal Democrats, and a solitary Tory in the rather weird Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale constituency. The Lib Dems are, it's safe to assume, pretty much toast, barring in their strongholds in the Highlands and Islands, so the main priority must surely be to unseat as many Labour troughers as possible. That's a hard ask -- many of them have massive majorities, and in many constituencies the SNP came third or fourth in the most recent general election. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see Labour annihilated in Scotland -- words cannot express how much I despise them and the way they cynically wrap themselves in the flag of social justice while doing nothing to alleviate the poverty the blights their strongholds -- but I'm pragmatic enough to accept that this is unlikely. The "ah vote Labour cuz ma da voted Labour" force is still strong.

That said, the ground appears to be shifting. The Labour citadels of Glasgow and North Lanarkshire both voted Yes by majority (in fact, every single constituency in Glasgow recorded an overall Yes vote), so it may be that the idea of the safe Labour seat is coming to an end. YouGov president Peter Kellner published an interesting article the other day speculating as to the likely makeup of the 2015 parliament, going to far as to suggest that the SNP could potentially hold the balance of power in the same way that the Liberal Democrats did in 2010. If that's the case, then the main precondition for any sort of coalition or confidence and supply arrangement must be a guarantee of full DevoMax.

When 2016 and the Scottish elections swing around, the picture is slightly different. The SNP already hold an absolute majority in the Scottish parliament under a system of proportional representation -- an anomaly that was never supposed to happen. It's feasible that they could return to being a minority government, which they previously managed successfully between 2007 and 2011, but I wouldn't like to suggest that a second majority is completely out of the question. It's certainly highly unlikely, barring some sort of scandal that rocks the incumbent government, that Labour will be back in power in 2016, and as for the Tories and Lib Dems -- forget it. The Tories might just cling on, as there's a core bloc that continues to vote for them come hell or high water, but the Lib Dems have already been reduced to a rump of five MSPs, and are for all intents and purposes irrelevant. The Greens currently only have two MSPs, but they stand a strong chance of increasing their presence, and the fact that the vast majority of their new members will be disillusioned Yes voters (membership has trebled since the referendum) means that the party is unlikely to abandon the pro-independence stance that it only reached after considerable internal debate.

So for the time being, the primary goal seems to be to pack both parliaments with as many pro-Yes MPs and MSPs as possible, and to use that position to agitate for a far more impressive package of new powers than what any of the three Westminster parties are currently proposing. I believe we should dismiss any thought of planning to hold another referendum in the immediate future, but to retain it as an option should (a) Westminster renege on its vows and/or (b) we find ourselves being dragged out of the EU against our will. The matter of independence has not, despite the wishes of the No campaign, been settled, and it's entirely possible that we could find ourselves at the ballot box once again within the next decade.

UP NEXT: My thoughts on why the Yes campaign failed.

It's a knockout!

I approached last night's debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling with some trepidation. While I thought the previous debate, on STV at the beginning of the month, was nothing like as bad for the First Minister as the media were desperate to claim, I won't deny that it was a low key and somewhat lacklustre performance for a man renowned for his barnstorming style. I also strongly disliked the adversarial format STV adopted which, in conjunction with the frequent ad breaks, rendered the debate disjointed and at times infuriatingly shouty as both men talked over each other in an attempt to make their points. Mindful that largely the same format would be used for the second of the two debates, and of the BBC's less than stellar (to put it mildly) coverage of the referendum to date, I very nearly didn't watch it live.

But at the last minute I changed my mind, and boy, was I glad I did. Taking place in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the lavish surroundings immediately gave the proceedings a classier feel than the generic studio set STV used at the Conservatoire with its garish primary colours and Jeremy Kyle-style stage and audience gallery. Right from the bat, Salmond seemed to be on form, clearly articulating his vision for an independent Scotland while all Darling could do was angrily jab his finger at "him" and once again fall back on the question of currency. It was the main line of attack he adopted in the previous debate and the subject on which the First Minister came most unstuck last time round. Clearly thinking he was on to a winner, Darling chose to retread the same ground again and again -- something which the audience had audibly grown tired of by the third time he brought it up, as evinced by the chorus of groans that rang out in the gallery.

Faced with clear, concise rebuttals from Salmond and a "Well, what would you do, then?" line of questioning from moderator Glenn Campbell, Darling came unstuck in dramatic fashion. "Of course we could use the pound!" he spluttered in exasperation, and with that the last remaining Project Fear scare story came crashing down. From then on, it was downhill all the way for the former Chancellor, with Salmond seeming to grow in stature by the minute and the audience turning against his opponent in a manner that seemed to suggest a genuine sea change of opinion, at least among those present. Indeed, the biggest body blows for Darling actually came from the impressively clued-up audience, in particular one woman who called him out on his rank hypocrisy regarding his own association with private healthcare providers and told him she hoped he could "feel Aneurin Bevan sitting on [his] shoulder":

As with the previous debate, the most frustrating section by far was the part where the two men cross-examined each other, owing mainly to Campbell's virtually non-existent moderation and Darling's insistence on asking Salmond a question, only to interrupt him three seconds into his answer. To a certain extent, Salmond gave as good as he got, leading to an at times incomprehensible babble of noise, but as his deputy Nicola Sturgeon learned when up against Johann Lamont, when your opponent is shouting you down and talking over you, you really have no option but to raise your own voice to make yourself heard. It wasn't a particularly edifying spectacle in either case, but as with the infamous Sturgeon/Lamont "stairheid rammy", there's little doubt in my mind as to who was at fault.

The cross-examination wasn't a complete dead loss, however. In the STV debate, Darling's biggest Achilles' heel was his inability to name any new powers that would be devolved to Scotland following a No vote, and I genuinely thought he would have come in better prepared this time round. Imagine my surprise, then, as, when asked by Salmond to name three new job-creating powers that would be devolved post-No, Darling again blinked and spluttered before coming out with some feeble line about the UK already providing a wealth of jobs and opportunities. Left defending savage Tory cuts and the hounding of the poor and disabled, he could only feebly insist "Look, I'm a Labour politician" -- a distinction which, most will agree, has long since ceased to be anything more than purely academic.

Since the very beginning, the Yes campaign have been at pains to point out that this referendum is not a vote on Alex Salmond, or Alastair Darling, or for that matter anyone else, but rather about whether the people of Scotland have a right to determine their own destiny, and Salmond made that point again last night. That said, I wouldn't want to underplay the potential for such a strong performance from Salmond to galvanise the broader Yes campaign. Even if last night's debate didn't directly change a single mind, it still provides the "ground soldiers" who are manning stalls, knocking doors and signing up unregistered voters every day with a renewed sense of optimism and purpose as we head into the crucial final three weeks of campaigning.

It's often said that you're only as good as your last performance. As such, if Salmond genuinely did (as I suspect) choose to keep his powder dry and concentrate all his energy on the second of the two debates, then it was certainly the right one to focus on. And with the first postal votes landing on people's doormats (mine included) within the next 36 hours, Salmond the bruiser came to the fore not a moment too soon.

You have been warned

There seems to be a misconception among many of those planning to vote against independence in September's referendum that, in the event of a No vote, the status quo will continue. While I normally prefer to leave the scaremongering to the Bitter Together mob, seeing as it's their forte, I'll make an exception in this case. Those who are happy with the way things are (and if you're happy with nuclear weapons situated 30 miles from our largest city, the proliferation of reliance on food banks, one in four children being born into poverty etc., then in my humble opinion you need your head examined) really need to realise that, if we remain in the UK, things are very likely going to get worse rather than stay the same, let alone improve.

A case in point is the NHS. I've heard many people say that, since health is a devolved issue, they think the Scottish NHS is safe from the ruin being visited on its English counterpart by the blue, red and yellow Tories. In this video, Dr Philippa Whitford disavows that notion in the strongest possible terms. As she puts it, "In five years, England will not have an NHS as you understand it. And if we vote No, in ten years neither will we."

Regardless of where you live in the UK, this video is worth watching, as it's not purely about independence (though obviously, as it was shot at an independence meeting, that's its main point). It's also an excellent overview of just what is being done to the English NHS -- something that the media seems curiously reticent to report on.

Quoted for truth