Quintin Jardine's blog

At this moment I am sat, gob-smacked, listening to Julian Assange whine to a hand-picked media audience about the effect on his health of two years’ enclosure within the Ecuadorean Embassy. Fact: at any time during those two years, he could have walked through the front door. Fact: he didn’t. Fact: as soon as he leaves his diplomatically protected hidey-hole he is liable to arrest and extradition to Sweden to face questioning on allegations of sexual misconduct.

I have nothing to say about the Cliff Richard story, save this. When the police raiding party arrived at his place in Berkshire, the media were waiting for them, and BBC even had a helicopter hovering over the scene.

If we were talking about a major drugs bust here, or a terrorist cell being captured, there might be the semblance of a pubic interest argument for such behaviour, but it isn’t. This is a well loved public figure whose reputation has been tossed into the bear-pit. No charges have been levelled, no cautions administered, and no advance warning was given to anyone other than the press.

I would like to think that this morning a second investigation is under way, to find the person who tipped them off. Will that happen? In the normal course of events I’d say, ‘No chance’. But this isn’t quite normal. Sir Cliff is a Tory icon. Watch this space.

Twenty per cent of the Rolling Stones want Scotland to stay in the Union. So does Tom Daley. So does Lord Jock Stirrup. So does Professor Stephen Hawking. So does Ross Kemp.

Noted.

So, the pollsters say that  Alastair Darling won the debate. As a Yes voter am I dismayed? Maybe slightly, when I think back to the confrontations during the 2010 Westminster election and  recall that they gave us Nick Clegg, but otherwise not too much.

Anyone who thought that Darling would simply roll over is a fool. TV election debates are about rhetoric rather than substantive argument, and there is no better preparation for that than eight years of Cabinet rank questioning at the Dispatch Box on the floor of the House of Commons. That’s a rather tougher school than weekly confrontations with the amiable Jack McConnell, and his successors, who remain unknown to  the vast majority of the Scottish electorate. But  where did the former chancellor score? Where was his victory? They are saying that it was on the lack of a Plan B on the currency question. The fact is there is no need for a Plan B. Scotland is already part of a currency union and there is no legal or constitutional reason why it should not remain so as an independent nation.

Yet Darling’s so-called strength is also his weakness, for it reveals that his entire strategy is built upon playing upon the fears of the well-to-do and the downright wealthy. Yes, the fears, cupboard monsters dreamed up in a strategists’ brain-storming session. In focusing on that group of voters, ‘Better Together’, has forgotten one essential, fundamental truth. And so, I would suggest, have the pollsters. The rich are always greatly out-numbered by the poor. It’s the way the world works.

Westminster politicians are used to fighting campaigns that are targeted towards the small minority, fifteen  percent at best, who are persuadable, and who will vote and decide elections on the basis of which party will put more money in their pockets through the following five years.

The referendum campaign isn’t like that. It isn’t about offering bribes to those who don’t need them, it’s about offering hope to those who need that more than anything, after forty years of the systematic de-industrialisation of Scotland and the construction of an economy in which the nation’s wealth has been concentrated inexorably on the City of London, which has become, in truth, a nation-state to which the rest of us are subservient. In government, Darling, as Chief Secretary and then as Chancellor, was one of the  leading players helping to nurture it. (He was also one of the people who caused its near-collapse, a truth that is never mentioned in his campaign literature.)  Make no mistake, he is still doing its bidding.

We have the opportunity to reclaim Scotland, not for the haves but for the have-nots, and in that crusade, there is one enormous ace in the hole: the fact that every single person in the land has exactly the same voting rights. If the issue is about currency, then remember this; the ballot paper is a currency of its own and every one is worth the same amount.

My hope is that September 18 will bring out people who neglect to vote in Westminster elections because there is nothing in it for them, but who will rush to tick the Yes box, because for the first time ever they feel truly enfranchised. If they do, as I believe they will, the Fearties will be swept into the Tweed, and the pollsters will discover that they have been plying their trade in a situation that they simply do not understand.

One Last Post about last night: at one point in the coverage I spotted our Prime Minister in a free seat and idly posted a tweet wondering who had let him in. Through the magic of an auto-arrangement the Headline techies have set up, this was copied on to my Facebook author page. That post prompted someone called Alan Jones to remark as follows:

‘Inappropriate comment. De friend time. Over. Bye bye’

For the  record, Alan, I have no idea who you are, but clearly you have heard of me, and that is a compliment of sorts. However, if you believe that a Facebook friendship gives you the right to censor my political opinions, then I am well shot of you. By the way, this will auto-post on Facebook also.