Quintin Jardine's blog

Finally it has come clean. The Scotsman newspaper has made a mockery of its own masthead by declaring itself on the side of Westminster.

In fact its stance has been clear from the outset of the campaign, and throughout that period its circulation has fallen inexorably, a so-called national newspaper selling fewer than 30,000 copies daily. In three years it is due to mark its bi-centenary. Will it survive that long? I doubt it.

So, the Royal Bank of Scotland will leave us if we vote ‘Yes’?

The truth is that for all Fred Goodwin’s Folly out at Edinburgh Airport, the policies and decisions of RBS have been driven by the City of London for decades, since someone decided it should become a global player . . . and we all know what happened after that.

So Bank of Scotland will follow suit?

Thanks to a panic-driven reaction by the leader of Better Together, who has been strangely silent for the last few days, Bank of Scotland has been part of the Lloyds group since the beginning of the crisis which he and his predecessor did much to create.

Let me tell you how honest and ethical the BoS has become under Lloyds’ direction. A few weeks ago the owners of a Scottish business turned up for work one morning to find men on their doorstep. The decades-old family owned company had been operating for years with a credit facility from Bank of Scotland. It was rationalising and a programme of asset realisation was under way.

Who were the men on the doorstep? They were sheriff officers. Without the knowledge of its clients, the Lloyds-run Bank of Scotland had sold the debt to venture capitalists. They had decided, as creditor, to put the company into administration, again without consultation. The former owners were history, and the venture capitalists stood to make a nice killing.

A reborn independent Scotland will want no part of such banking practices. Indeed I hope it will make them illegal. So fair enough, RBS, BoS, piss off to London. The functions which you have in Scotland will remain of necessity, for there will be no speedy way to relocate them. Your branch networks will remain, although they may have to operate under a new and more rigorous regulatory system.

For an issue that was always meant to be decided by the people of Scotland, we are sure seeing a hell of a lot of interference from outside. This is being co-ordinated in the main by the London media, although it will be interesting to see how their Scottish editions declare, should the polls on which they lean so heavily show ‘Yes’ in the lead next Wednesday.

One part of their strategy is clear, their determination to focus attention totally on Alex Salmond, and to demonise him in the process. Apart from being as vicious as we have come to expect from what used to be Fleet Street, it is also a gross distortion of the truth . . . another London editorial norm.

‘Yes’ is my campaign just as much as it belongs to Alex Salmond. I had my first flirtation with the SNP when he has just begun secondary school. He was still there when I was in at the birth of the party’s modern era when a diffident Winnie Ewing visited my newspaper office just before winning the Hamilton by-election.

The ‘Yes’ campaign is the culmination of her efforts, and those of thousands more, stretching back to Dr Robert McIntyre, elected in 1945 by my home town, Motherwell, as the party’s first MP. Today ‘Yes’ has millions of co-owners, in Scotland and beyond. For our opponents to focus their venom on one single man is stupid. It is also dangerous, for all they are doing is hardening attitudes and encouraging more and more independence votes, from those who after a lifetime of being bullied by London, are mad as hell and ain’t going to take it anymore.

A point of fact: at this moment Scotland is part of a currency union within the United Kingdom.

Of those who say we can’t keep the pound, I ask this: how do you take such a union apart against the will of one of its participants?

Fergus, a blog reader, posted this as a comment yesterday. It’s beautiful and worthy of the widest possible audience so here goes.

‘I copied this from a newspaper the other day and it seems to me to be spot on, especially the “self-repudiation and self-harm bit.” We need to go for it. I can’t vote because I don’t live in Scotland but I’m with you (us) all the way.’

“Independence, as more Scots are beginning to see, offers people an opportunity to rewrite the political rules. To create a written constitution, the very process of which is engaging and transformative. To build an economy of benefit to everyone. To promote cohesion, social justice, the defence of the living planet and an end to wars of choice.
To deny this to yourself, to remain subject to the whims of a distant and uncaring elite, to succumb to the bleak, deferential negativity of the no campaign, to accept other people’s myths in place of your own story: that would be an astonishing act of self-repudiation and self-harm. Consider yourselves independent and work backwards from there; then ask why you would sacrifice that freedom.”
Twitter: @georgemonbiot

I am not given to whooping with laughter very often, but last night was one of those times, when I heard that Larry, Curly and Moe, AKA the three Westminster party leaders, were skipping today’s PMQs in favour of a trip to Scotland, clad, no doubt, in new brown trousers. Coming on top of Cameron’s bizarre decision to fly the Saltire over Downing Street, this is another pure gift for ‘Yes”.

Are they coming because they no longer trust their Scottish counterparts to get the job done? Looks like it. Shortly before this bombshell, Sky News showed me on my iPad a clip of that trio, on the stump.

I don’t mean to be cruel here, but if (God forbid) Ruth Davidson was involved in an accident anywhere in Scotland, having left her handbag at home, and was rendered unconscious, it would probably take a good couple of hours before anyone recognised her as the Scots Tory leader. As for Willie Rennie, her LibDem counterpart, his profile is indicative of the fact that his parliamentary party at Holyrood could fit easily round a very small dining table.

For me, the most interesting of the three in terms of body language, not personal profile for she isn’t very well known either, was the Scottish Labour Leader, the very nice Johann Lamont. As she made her pitch for Bitter Together, I couldn’t help feeling that her heart wasn’t quite in it. As thousands of her Scottish party members reject London Labour’s arguments and prepare to turn Scotland into a permanently Tory-free zone, is she beginning to realise that she has pitched her tent in the wrong camp-site?

Another misdirected arrow: a joint pro-Union statement by Sir Malcolm Rifkind and the Lords Lang and Forsyth, the three former Tory Secretaries of State for Scotland, who presided over the reduction of their party’s Scottish representation at Westminster from twenty-one MPs in 1983, to zero in 1997.

I knew all of them. Clever chaps no doubt, but not a wise man among them.

It’s not my place to make suggestions to Bitter Together, but here’s one that might win them a few votes.

Let the Westminster Government pledge to rename the Bank of England, The United Kingdom Central Bank, and relocate it to Glasgow, Edinburgh, or better still, Inverness. Let it also pledge to relocate the Faslane nuclear base from the Firth of Clyde to the Thames Estuary.

What better ways to demonstrate the importance of Scotland to the English, and their affection for our country?

Three days ago, on Saturday September 6, 2014, I did something of which I have dreamt all my life without believing until a few years ago that I would ever have the opportunity. Against all the unspoken opposition of many of my friends, disregarding the pleas of an English lady author of children’s books who happens to own a piece of my homeland, ignoring the contemptible vitriol of the London media, (which will never be forgotten in Scotland, regardless of the result) in the face of threats of dire consequences from politicians with axes ground to such a fine edge that they could fell an oak tree with a single blow, I cast my vote for an independent Scotland and committed it to the post.

In all honesty, when I did so, I felt within myself that it would be in vain. Next day the YouGov poll was published, showing ‘Yes’ in the lead. Today another showed the two sides tied. There may be a margin for error, but given the results of previous sampling, there is no doubt that the ephemeral thing called ‘Momentum’ is with the Independence camp. If it continues, Scotland will win, and on September 19, an old nation will be reborn.

Today I read a ridiculous piece in the Telegraph, suggesting that ‘senior MPs’ were urging the Queen to intervene on the side of ‘No’. Of course there are ‘senior MPs’ who are stupid enough to do that, but I doubt very much that HM will be daft enough to listen to them. If Scotland votes ‘Yes’ she will continue to reign over a United Kingdom, as did her ancestor James VI and I. She may have to preside over two state openings of Parliament, not one, but at least in Scotland she will only have to walk across the road to do the job, there being a pedestrian crossing in place already.

Another lie is being pumped out today by the London media, that of panic in the financial markets following the YouGov poll.

Here is the truth: yesterday the FTSE 100 barely twitched, and today it continues to sit 300 points higher than it did one month ago; as for Sterling, today it sits at a healthy 1.61 against the dollar, and as for the Euro, this morning it has bounced back above 1.25.

When Douglas Alexander, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, speaks of imaginary economic problems, he shows why his colleagues are said to have christened him ‘Rain Man’; he has difficulty connecting with reality. The truth, Douglas, is that if Scotland says ‘Yes’ next week, one of the first things that will happen thereafter will be a commitment by Westminster to currency union. That is what today’s reaction indicates, and it is what would be the case, for sure. As for the Footsie, it will be business as usual.

Most bizarre of all, though is Gordon Brown, old Captain Barbossa, stepping forward as the saviour of the Union. That the man who did more that any other to demonstrate the case for Independence by his lamentable performance as Prime Minister, should expect any electorate now to believe a single bloody word he says, well, for me that redefines irony.

You will have noticed that a couple of paragraphs ago, I used the word ‘if’. I am not allowing myself to be carried away here. There are still many sensible people who will vote for the status quo, because they feel as strongly they are right, as I am passionate that Independence is too precious to reject. I have nothing but respect for them; it’s the people who front up their argument, and the tactics of fear that they have adopted, that I dislike.

The momentum may stop here; that’s what the media will declare probably, once they realise that they’ve helped to create it. I am not without experience in politics and one thing I’ve observed is that in the last couple of days of election campaigns there is often a small swing towards the status quo.

Will that happen next week? Maybe so; maybe Captain Barbossa will throw a cloak of darkness over the new ‘Yes’ optimism. But for now, to quote the fictional Rustin Cohle, it seems to me the daylight’s winning.

I’m on the YouGov panel, which means that every day I’m sent three questions on current and world affairs. Today’s asked panelists whether Dave Cameron or Ed Miliband would make the better Prime Minister. DC won by 49% to 32% with 18% ‘don’t know’. Conversely, 47% to 35% felt that Labour were more in tune with their lives. Yet the same sample felt, by 50% to 34%, that the Tories would do a better job of running the economy over the next five years.

DebateTwo starts in three hours time. However it clashes with Man City vs Liverpool, so guess what I’ll be watching? There is nothing that Alastair Darling could possibly say that would persuade me to go against my country and my conscience by voting No.

Better Together advances the cause of the well-to-do and offers nothing to the poor and the deprived. Worse, it’s their enemy. 

To those who genuinely believe in the Westminster union, I respect your view, and your right to express it through the ballot box. But I don’t respect the way the case is being put forward, and I hope that Scotland will reject it..