Both of the Scottish independence campaigns are flawed – here's how

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/15/scottish-independence-campaigns-flawed-yes-no

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John Harris: The no campaign is out of touch with the grassrooots

If Elizabeth Windsor's thinly coded comment hasn't quite sealed victory for the Scottish unionists, perhaps this one will: everyone's favourite designer-clad, continent-hopping, Spice Girl-betrothing icon, David Beckham, is following up on his well-known interest in current affairs by advising the people of Scotland that they should definitely say no. Or perhaps not: joining such big hitters as Barbara Windsor, Bruce Forsyth, Simon Cowell and Stephen Hawking in signing the "Let's Stay Together" petition, he says that "it is not my intention to tell you what to do". Funny, that – because that's surely the point, isn't it?

It's yet another example of the woeful PR that has put the no campaign on the back foot. For a start, the Let's Stay Together organiser Dan Snow's claim that Beckham is "a Londoner who moved to the north to play world-class football under a Scotsman" and therefore is "the embodiment of what we can be achieve in this country" is for the birds. In the Scottish context, he is a former captain of the English football team, not a cultural archetype well known for his ability to move hearts and minds north of the border. His late entry into the debate and membership of the international celebocracy speaks volumes about 1) a certain desperation, and 2) a campaign seemingly devoid of roots and the common touch.

Beckham's new role suggests a pitiful grasp of one the key differences between the two campaigns, which lies at the heart of why yes have made so much of the running. Even Better Together insiders have been heard crediting the pro-independence side with being "the biggest grassroots campaign Scotland has ever seen", and that's what it feels like. Beyond the SNP, a chaotic, multi-headed assembly of forces that has pulled off something we haven't seen in England for decades: making the political cultural, and vice versa. Its most effective champions, from what I've sensed on the ground, are not politicians or celebs, but distinctly unfamous activists and voters, who have given the whole thing the air of an energetic upsurge – no mean feat, given that support for independence has long been such a minority interest.

By contrast, the no side has too often felt like a cabal of politicians, with too little of the language of hope and optimism in their lungs, and a tendency to voice their politics in terms of threats. Their key allies – not least, all those businesspeople – have done the same, and added to the sense of the usual suspects, shouting their arguments down a megaphone in the hope that the great unwashed will see the light. The worries that have been spread over the past week may be enough fear to clinch it for no (a narrow win for the union now feels to me like by far the most likely outcome), but in ending their campaign on such a cheap and nasty note, the no side may have put deep cracks in Scotland's feelings about the UK that may sooner or later be reopened. We are saddled with a political class that seems incapable of ever taking the long view.

This bathetic pro-union gimmick couples that air of arrogance with a real sense of the absurd. And to think there are still four days to go: what with his new album being freshly released, Bono will surely be along by Wednesday afternoon.

John Harris is a writer for the Guardian

John Wight: The yes campaign is built on illusion and has an ugly side

Someone once said that "love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion". The yes campaign for Scottish independence is intent on proving that the same wisdom applies to separatism.

Throughout Scotland, the campaign has peddled hope in the transformational effects of independence. It has attracted the young, the old, idealists, nationalists, socialists, and the marginalised in huge number to its ranks; to the point where it has taken on the mantle of a democratic insurgency. But the ugly side of the benefits of separatism has emerged along with this illusion.

Talk of "reckonings" and the issuing of "stark warnings" by leading yes campaigners and high-profile supporters in recent days has given us a glimpse into the risks attached to the closely run result predicted in the polls.

For along with the upsurge in political engagement we have seen over these past few weeks and months has come division. There is excitement in the air, but there is also tension, trepidation even, over the outcome and its aftermath. Scotland is now a divided society. Families, communities, workplaces, and friends are split, some perhaps irrevocably, and now more than ever political leadership is required to cool a temperature that has risen to dangerous levels.

A false conflation has been made between a no vote and support for the Tories, for Westminster, the banks, big business, and so on. Such a blatant distortion has not been helped by the ever more shrill and pugnacious rhetoric from sections of the yes campaign – rhetoric which neither Alex Salmond nor any leading member of the campaign has failed to denounce or distance themselves from as emphatically as they should have. On the contrary, Salmond and the SNP have now declared the referendum to be Team Scotland v Team Westminster, leading to an accusation by former defence secretary John Reid of fanning anti-English feeling.

Separatism is an ugly business. History leaves no doubt of it. And even the most solid and mature democratic society can be ripped apart when it takes root. We are in uncharted territory with this referendum, and with it being such a close-run thing the danger of the grievances that have been bandied around by the yes campaign over the media's biased coverage, over financial institutions and major retailers raising concerns regarding the impact of independence – the danger of all this spilling over into something ugly should not be underestimated.

Oscar Wilde warned us that patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. Let's hope we have reason to dispute him after 18 September.

John Wight is a writer and political commentator