Just another fallacy

I suppose I must deal with this idiocy again. One of the things you have to get used to as a politics blogger is the need to repeat everything. No matter how much you dislike doing so, you’ll find yourself obliged to say the same things over and over again. You’ll be faced with trying to find half a dozen different ways of explaining some simple thing and two dozen different ways of writing it. It is very wearying.

The idiocy I’m addressing here is perhaps better illustrated by a comment on the above post:

Very helpful. Head start this time.

Four words. Two fallacies. Well done!

The least of the fallacies is the idea of their being a “this time” - meaning a new ‘independence referendum’. How is this new referendum supposed to happen? None of the nominally pro-independence parties has any proposal for a proper constitutional referendum. The SNP - who the polls tell us will form the next government - has an ‘independence strategy’ which goes no further than another request for a Section 30 order. Even then, this request depends on there being a repeat of the 2011 outcome. Which was a fluke.

John Swinney imagines he can engineer a fluke. Somebody fetch him a dictionary! A heavy one!

There is no “this time”. There is not going to be a referendum of any kind as a consequence of the 2026 Scottish general election. Because no party is proposing one. See what I mean about repetition?

By far the worst folly, however, is the inane notion that starting from a higher level of support (according to polls) is a “head start”. That it somehow makes a decisive majority easier to obtain. After all, the argument goes, the Yes campaign added 12 points to the poll number in 2012. A couple of years later, the actual vote was 45%. So, even if we are starting at the lowest point of the poster’s estimate of Yes support, adding 12 points in the course of a repeat of the 2014 campaign should take us to 60%. That’ll do!

Except its total bullshit. While the numbers tell the shallow-minded that we have a “head start” (in a referendum that isn’t happening!), what they say to the thinking person what the polling says is that we’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit. We’ve got the support that was just sitting there waiting to be picked up. The Yes campaign may have ‘converted’ a few people. But not nearly as many as the No campaigned deterred with its ‘Project Doubt’. Most of the 12 points apparently gained by the Yes campaign would probably have come from people who would have voted Yes even if there wasn’t any Yes campaign.

That’s what the 2014 Yes campaign achieved. It persuaded latent independence supporters to go out and vote Yes. If the campaign had brought people over from the No side, we would have expected far more of them to slip back. The behaviour of the British state towards Scotland in the intervening period will have had the effect of keeping people on the Yes side. The polling numbers bear this out.

But all through that intervening period the SNP/Scottish Government along with all the weel-kent names on the pro-independence side, all tell us that the British were driving people to Yes with the likes of Brexit and much besides. That effect is not reflected in the polls. as I pointed out in my reply to the above post:

Average Yes in first 10 polls after the 2014 referendum = 45.8%

Average Yes in the most recent 10 polls = 44.4%

What are you getting so excited about?

It’s a rough and ready calculation. But it’s enough to give an indication. I’ve done it repeatedly over the past ten years. The result is always the same. No significant movement.

What the polling tells us is that we did the easy part of the job a decade ago. If you think Scotland’s cause as a mountain with independence at the summit, in 2014 we reached basecamp. From here, it’s mountaineering, not walking!

The closer you get to the top of that mountain, the steeper it gets. This parallels the difficulty of adding points. The first 12 points gained took a bit of effort. The next 6 point’s will be ten times as hard to get. The 3 after that will be ten times as hard again and will never be conquered.

It’s not just about difficulty. There is also the matter of the type of campaigning it will take to win those additional points. We’ll be attempting to scale a sheer rockface, not hiking through the gently rolling foothills.

2014 was a preamble. The real thing is yet to come. It may never come. It certainly won’t so long as our political leaders imagine independence is something that must be won from the British state rather than something that must be taken by the Scottish people.

You can’t climb mountains in hillwalking gear. You need the right equipment, and the skills to use it. Getting an opportunity to exercise our right of self-determination fully and properly will require a different approach than was adopted in 2012-2014. It will be a totally different operation demanding a very different strategy. Which begs the question: are we up to the task?

Are our politicians up to the task? Are they mountaineers? Or mere hillwalkers? The impression I get is that they could barely manage a stroll along a country lane. They don’t even know they’re facing a mountain! John Swinney appears to genuinely believe that the summit can be gained simply by wandering around the base of the mountain waiting on someone else preparing an easy ascent for us. He is a fool!