Scottish referendum: Brown criticises no campaign’s tone

Former PM, Gordon Brown has criticised the no campaign’s negative tone. Calling for the Better Togther Campaign (headed by Alistair Darling who was, once upon a time, his chancellor) to adopt a more positive approach to encourage Scots to vote ‘no’ in the upcoming vote.

Writing in the Guardian, Brown – the official representative for his party’s pro-UK campaign, United with Labour – explained how the no campaign has got their approach all wrong:

“Go up to Scotland and make the case for the union,” David Cameron has implored his ministers. But when the message became: “Britain says no to Scots participation in the pound” and “Britain says no to further defence work” and “Britain says Scots will go bankrupt”, ministers allowed the nationalists to present the referendum as a choice between Britain and Scotland. They forget that it is only Scots who are voting, that the voters’ starting point is not the greatness of Britain or the longevity of the Union but their own needs and aspirations as Scots, and that the no campaign will win only by presenting a Scottish vision of Scotland’s future as a patriotic alternative to that of the SNP.

 Of course, the defence secretary [Philip Hammond] was factually correct when he said UK arms contracts would not come to an independent Scotland’s shipyards. But instead of using the language of threats and ultimatums, a far better pro-union argument is to praise the unique contribution of Scottish defence workers and to support Scots who argue for pooling resources for our mutual defence.

While criticising the divisive nature of the campaign – which he argues pits Scotland against England – he highlighted an article posted on the The Scotland Office’s website last week:

 it is difficult to see how last week’s (now seen as rogue) UK government briefing did not patronise Scots and pose Scotland against Britain when it suggested that the benefits for Scots of staying in the Union were more fish and chips, more pies and Bovrils, and more cheap holidays. It has been part of a wider misunderstanding of what Scots want – now thankfully being corrected.

He goes on to point out that Scottish nationalism is by no means a new concept, but that it has surged in recent years due to economic and social instabilities in the UK:

“fuelling the nationalist uprising…is the insecurity many Scots feel at the economic and social dislocation wrought by de-industrialisation and the loss of a million heavy-industry jobs. Here, of course, the quarrel that Scots have is not with England, but alongside England, with globalisation. Across Britain we have to offer better answers showing we can create more secure, more skilled, better-paid employment”

 To address this, Brown explains, Labour would provide the answers:

It is not too late to build a more progressive vision of a Britain that can accommodate Scotland’s interests and values and is more in tune with a progressive view of our British future. Ed Balls’ commission on “an inclusive globalisation” should report on how the UK and Scottish governments can work together to address the insecurities and inequalities that are turning people to seek protection in nationalist and anti-EU, anti immigrant parties. Scottish Labour has to breathe new life into, and devolve new responsibility to, Scottish civic institutionswhose ability to speak for Scotland has been drowned out by an obsession with centralising powers under a Scottish state. And we need to continue the fundamental reform of the British constitution that Labour began.