#StillYes: there is hope

Clackmannanshire no more

Is it really ten years? Doesn't a decade fly when you're having fun? When you're subjected to grinding austerity? When you're pulled out of the EU against your will? When your parliament's powers are weakened so a government you didn't vote for can play culture war politics? When pensioners shiver in unheated houses in one of the most energy-rich countries in the world?

I mean, phew, think what would have happened if Scotland had voted for independence and the No campaign's dire warnings had come true. We might have had years of grinding austerity or been dumped out of the EU or had pensioners shivering in unheated houses …

But we'd never again have had governments we didn't vote for. Or a House of Lords. Or Boris Johnson and Liz Truss ruining our country while they handed out billions of pounds of contracts to their political connections. Or, ach weel, we are where we are.

(To the No voters reading this, I know this is all very "Yessish" but I will be devoting a strand of this project to what you think and want. In the meantime, please bear with me. It's a tricky anniversary and I've got some stuff to get off my chest. Perhaps you could read on with a wry smile and a touch of schadenfreude?)

It's easy to be down-heartened. It's been a decade that's really rammed home Mark Renton's contemplation on the nature of Scottishness. Brexit, the buffoonery of BoJo, Covid cronyism, and the endless march of wealth inequality hand-in-hand with total failure to deal with the fact the climate is on fire. 

Friends, we have had an object lesson in why you shouldn't put your future in someone else's hands.

The unsung

After my last Yes We Didnae missive, I got an email from a former SNP staffer who had been at Yes Scotland HQ during the first TV debate. They gently pointed out that they had been working very hard in our office that night, rather than attending the shindig in reception. I'd just like to take a moment to acknowledge the very hard work put in by SNP staffers (and Scottish Green Party and Scottish Socialist Party people too) that night and during the whole campaign. 

Yes Scotland was wound up the day after the referendum. That was a mistake. It meant that people who'd given their all for two years - staffers and volunteers alike - were just left to get on with it with no closure. It also meant that there was no formal analysis of why we lost, something which strikes me now as extraordinary and which is why I've started the Yes We Didnae project.

Yes HQ got a lot of stick during and after the campaign. A lot of that was unfair. Sure, there were problems with Yes Scotland. There were difficult moments. Very difficult moments. Heck, there were some very difficult people but the vast majority of the folk who worked there were talented, hard-working and gave it their all. 

A personal note: I don't feel my digital team ever got the credit they deserved for running a truly extraordinary social media campaign. (Though I have heard acknowledgement from folk on the No side about the amazing job we did and the nightmares we caused them.) If you'll indulge me, I'll give my team a wee mention now. Kevin Gilmartin, Peter Dempsie, Stewart Bremner (and Caroline Key, who provided incredibly valuable tech consultancy): we absolutely wiped the floor with the No side and our work was a key reason support for Yes increased as much as it did, despite the hostility of nearly every newspaper, and the effect of that on broadcast coverage. Every Yes group, every Yes organisation, every Yes crowdfunder got a huge boost by being promoted to the enormous social media audiences you helped build up. We created amazing, engaging, targeted content that cut through the bubble. We trained Yessers on how to use social media. And we encouraged people to tell their own stories about independence in a distributed peer-to-peer campaign that empowered citizens. Your commitment, professionalism and talent were inspirational. It was an honour and a pleasure to work with you. 

But enough about staffers. I'm afraid that there is a strand of people feeling unsung that runs through the Yes campaign experience. This came through in the Yes We Didnae survey. 

First of all, the 1,651 respondents who answered the question about what they did during the campaign were very, very busy. (The usual caveat: this isn't a weighted poll, it's a self-selecting survey of people interested in the Yes campaign.)

• 65% had shared material on social media

• 54% had made a donation to a party or campaign group

• 47% attended marches or rallies

• 31% delivered leaflets

• 80% spoke to friends and family about the issues

Some 45% of 1636 people who responded said that they felt their efforts made a difference, with 33% saying they didn't know. 

The sad thing is that only 30% of respondents felt their efforts were recognised and acknowledged. So if nobody from the Yes Scotland team has yet thanked you for all you did during the IndyRef, let me rectify that now: "Thank you very much. What you did was incredible and radically changed Scottish politics."

There is hope

I'll never forget how I felt when I voted on 18 September, 2014. For the first time in a long time I felt hopeful about the direction of our country. I felt excitement, joy. A confession: technically, I didn't cast my vote. I'd taken my youngest along to the polling station and it was them who very, very carefully, put the X in the box marked Yes, standing on tiptoe in the voting booth. It was for them and their siblings that I voted Yes. I wanted a better future for them than the UK has delivered.

A memory: on the afternoon of the 18th, I suddenly, for the first time in two years, found myself with nothing to do. Everything had been done which could be done, everything that could be scheduled had been scheduled. Feeling that I had to do something, I phoned up a friend who was planning to vote No. "Have you voted yet?" I asked. They had not so I arranged to meet them in central Glasgow to try to talk them round. It would be lovely to say that I convinced them. I didn't but I kept trying to win people over right til the end. 

You see, I was not one of those who thought it was never there, that we'd always lose. I truly believed with every fibre of my being that we would win, right up until Clackmannanshire. After that came sadness and hopelessness. A particularly galling moment came on the 19th when I dragged myself out of bed and went to the local Coop, only to see No-voting friends buying bottles of fizz. Ouch. I went home to comfort my kids and instead it was them who told me it'd all be OK. And the younger generations continue to give me hope. Support for independence remains very high among them. 

That said, support for Indy is still at 48% among the wider population, according to Ballot Box Scotland's tracker. That's amazing given the ups and downs of politics. Those numbers show that the cause of independence has not gone away and is not going away.

In terms of process, I know it seems like the ba's up on the slates at the moment. But we have learned an important, if painful, lesson. It's this: SNP political dominance is not enough to win independence. If a pro-independence party having political hegemony in Scotland was a sufficient condition then we would be independent already. The same goes for having a pro-indy majority at Holyrood. 

So what's missing? I think we need a settled understanding among the Scottish people of how some of the key issues will work after independence. That needs to be robust and honest. We need to be able to say on currency: "We have several options. Here is how they would work. Here are the pros. Here are the cons. Here is how we compensate for the cons. And here is why we should bother."

I throw that last bit in because I see signs from the analysis I've shared so far that we have focused too much on "how" we could be independent and not the why, the "how we could do it" and not the "why we should do it". That's very hard work and will require commitment - and a frank acknowledgement that Scotland's future contains hard choices, either in the UK or out of it. 

Another thing we'll need is patience. There were 20 years between the first and second devolution referendums. We may have to wait. Maybe we need to imitate Robert the Bruce's spider and think in terms of a longer game rather than pressing now for an independence referendum which the polls say we would almost certainly lose. Let's use that time wisely.

The main ingredient that's missing is the overwhelming support of the Scottish people. 

When independence comes - and I believe it will - it will not be delivered by clever court cases or electoral sleight of hand. It will arrive carried on the shoulders of the vast majority of the Scottish people, not in any disruptive or tumultuous way but simply because most of us will see self-determination as the sensible and positive thing to do. 

For that to be the case we need to understand our friends' and neighbours' attitudes better. We've been using the same arguments in the same way which did not succeed in 2014. A lot of the campaigning that's been done has been repeating the same messages rejected by 55% of voters ten years ago. Given that, it's amazing that support looks like it's gone up at all. I know there are polls that suggest X% of people will "never" support independence, but that's based on current framings of the argument. We must change it up.

We need to start by listening, not campaigning. Those of us on the Yes side need to listen to No voters and hear what they think about our country's future, not through a prism of "hOw CaN wE cOnVeRt YoU?" but from a place of genuine curiosity. Remember: these are the people with whom we will build that better nation one day. Their views count. That's why the next phase of this project will focus on understanding those who didn't vote Yes. 

In the meantime, if you voted No, please enjoy your fizz with my blessing.

If you voted Yes, tonight I'm meeting up with a few ex-comrades. On my way, I'll pop into the pub that was the unoffical Meeting Room II of the Yes Digital team. I'll buy a "malt of the moment", just as I did after polls closed. And I will raise that glass to each every one of you, to everyone who voted Yes, to everyone who campaigned so hard. I'll drink a toast to the better nation we could have been, and the brighter day that I believe is waiting for us: the kinder, happier, fairer, greener, healthier country Scotland can and will be.

#StillYes #ForeverYes

Still to come:

I'll soon be sending out updates on:

• What No voters have said so far

• Suggestions for a new survey for No voters 

• Pivoting the project to how we win independence

Thank you very much for reading and taking part.

A' the best

Stewart