Family UK vs team Scotland: how the indyref campaigns divide
Today’s soundbite spats come down to “family UK” versus “team Scotland.” On such phrases, much hangs.
David Cameron has been up in Edinburgh to tell voters that they mustn’t vote for independence just to hurt the “effing Tories.” The “UK family” was too wonderful, historic and productive to split up, he said.
Alex Salmond branded David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg “team Westminster,” in contrast to himself representing “team Scotland.”
Of course, there are two team Scotland’s of roughly equal numbers according to the polls, but Mr Salmond was in the business of political advantage not strict accuracy.
And he was helped in the optics of all this by his location – a housing estate in Portobello on Edinburgh’s outskirts, surrounded as ever by enthusiastic, bushy-tailed supporters.
Mr Cameron, by contrast, was addressing financial services workers in an hermetically sealed swish office environment. Mr Salmond knows the advantage of these sight-bites and exploits them ruthlessly.
Read more: will ‘almost federal’ offer to Scots change votes?
Mr Salmond was joined by Jim Sillars, two sides of one of the oldest most celebrated feuds in Scottish politics. Mr Sillars arrived in a battle bus named in memory of his late wife, the passionate nationalist Margo Macdonald.
Mr Sillars now says Alex Salmond has “played a blinder” with the yes campaign. What he’s undoubtedly done is oversee an extraordinary grassroots campaign.
Read more: no camp throw the kitchen sink at it
It’s like the anti-Iraq war campaign with bits of Barack Obama’s first presidential race bolted on strung out over months and months: relentless contact-making, binding people into groups with like-minded or local types and a relentlessly positive message.
No camp supporters have embraced and re-tweeted Carol Craig’s article in the Scottish Review – which talks about how she feels the yes camp have been almost cultist in message discipline. But I write this having just been chatting to voters in Motherwell shopping precinct and I have to say it wasn’t much mentioned.
Follow @GaryGibbonBlog on Twitter