It can be infuriating as well as exhilarating to be part of this debate we're having. But I'm never in any doubt what side I have to be on - just a look at who backs and funds the No campaign reaffirms that.
I've written elsewhere in this blog about what I think a Yes vote immediately achieves, or leads to us achieving. Useful things, too: defending the Welfare state, defending the NHS, getting rid of Trident, renationalising the mail service. And it delivers a shock to the status quo, both here and in the rest of the UK, providing working class people with the chance to upset the neoliberal consensus.
(See these posts for a fuller discussion:
- "Will it actually make any difference to us if Scotland becomes independent?"
- "We can defend the Welfare state: we can vote Yes". ).
That's what it achieves. What it does not achieve is a fair society and a restructuring of democracy. We do not automatically get equal access to resources, participation and decision-making for all in our society. On the 19th September, those inequalities will still be there. On independence day, 24th March 2016, those inequalities will still be there. Food banks will still be needed, services will still be unequal, local democracy will still be distant and unresponsive, and so on and so on.
Some Yes campaigners talk as if voting Yes solves all that in itself. It doesn't. Yes is not a panacea; it's an opportunity to start building a better Scotland. It starts a process.
That doesn't make it not worth doing. It's very much worth doing. It's a great opportunity to break the neoliberal logjam; perhaps the only such opportunity we'll have in our lifetimes. Certainly the only such opportunity available to us now.
You might think that's obvious, so why even bring it up? Well, some people have said to me that because a Yes vote doesn't automatically bring us a fair and equal society, it isn't worth bothering with, that it's therefore a distraction. This is a purist position I can't agree with. We have to take what's in front of us and see what we can do with it.
To those people I say: look at what we can do immediately, and look at what we have to chance to build towards. Does voting No achieve that? Voting No doesn't even start a process. If No wins, then we keep WMD, we continue down the road to losing the welfare state and the NHS, the Royal Mail stays in private hands, the neoliberal project marches on uninterrupted, and we keep the institutional rightward bias of Westminster. I say it in person when I meet them, and I try to reach them through social media, to open a dialogue with them. I don't expect one tweet to change anyone's mind, but just tweeting to the converted definitely won't.
So, I'll continue to say it: these immediate gains are worth having, so let's take them. Then let us push further and take the rest. That's what Yes achieves. Where does No get us?
