The voters who felt they shared an affinity with England, Northern Ireland and Wales were likely to be voting No anyway. But among the middle million we needed to win over, a sense of common identity with the rest of the UK was very low. Indeed, it was almost as low as that felt by the most ardent nationalists, those ‘blue-collar Bravehearts’ who would die before voting to remain under the English yoke.
In other words, those who needed persuading weren’t going to be convinced by abstract ideas of history, or an emotional appeal to unity or identity, but rather by practicality. The patriotic case for our historic Union should be made, as I’d discussed with Gordon Brown, but our focus had to be on the wages people brought home, the pensions they received now or in the future, the public services they relied on, and the national institutions that kept them safe.
Were the risks really that grave? People often said to me, ‘If you thought that Scotland leaving the United Kingdom would be so bad, why did you allow a referendum?’ I’ve explained why I thought holding the referendum was the right thing to do. Denying it would merely be delaying it; and delaying it would ignite a level of grievance that made independence inevitable.
What was my role to be in this vital battle? Jaunting up from London, representing a party that barely existed north of the border, lecturing Scots – there could be no finer fuel for Salmond’s righteous indignation. The message to me, therefore, was to put strict limits on my appearances in Scotland. Fortunately, there was a front-facing role for me. In order to create the ‘permission’ to go negative and outline the risks of independence, we would have to set out the positive case for the Union. There I could make an impact. I could make the romantic, pro-Union case: that you could be Scottish and British, and that being the latter was no betrayal of the former.
That was what brought me to the Olympic Park velodrome in London in February 2014. Two years previously I’d seen Team GB, led by Scotland’s Chris Hoy, enter the record books in this building. Just think of all the things our four nations – the wider Team GB – had done together, and could still do together. I said, ‘Let the message ring out from Manchester to Motherwell, from Pembrokeshire to Perth, from Belfast to Bute, from us to the people of Scotland. Let the message be this: we want you to stay.’
And when it came to Scotland, I didn’t stay away completely. I made some carefully planned visits, during which I underpinned passion and patriotism with the practicalities we knew were key to victory, from a BP oil rig to the vast deck of the new HMS Queen Elizabeth II aircraft carrier at Rosyth.
I also authorised the use of the government machine. Keeping the UK together was UK government policy; it was right that the government should set out the facts (Scottish independence was the Scottish government’s official policy, and the civil servants there would be supporting that too). So we published fifteen papers detailing exactly how Scotland was better off in the UK, from defence to data roaming. We sent a leaflet to every Scottish household called ‘What Staying in the UK Means for Scotland’.
Of course, the biggest risks associated with independence were economic. How would trade across the border work? What about English companies based in Scotland, and vice versa? What would happen to the industries subsidised by the UK taxpayer? And, biggest of all, what about the pound in Scots’ pockets? For months Salmond had insisted that an independent Scotland would keep sterling. But that wasn’t his decision to make. It was the UK government’s. And George and I – and the Lib Dems – were completely aligned in our opposition to his plan.
Currency unions are fraught with difficulty – look at how the euro was stretching the EU to breaking point. An independent Scotland could hardly expect taxpayers in a Union it had just voted to leave to back the use of their currency by a new country. ‘If Scotland walks away from the UK, it walks away from the pound,’ George declared in Edinburgh that February, playing our most controversial card yet.
By the summer, the nationalists were making their most controversial move.
I had always thought the health service was a reason for Scotland to stay in the Union: a great pooling of resources to help those in need, whoever they were, wherever they were in the UK. Instead, during his one-on-one BBC debates with Darling that August, Salmond was alleging that the Tories were gutting this great national institution, and the only way to protect it in Scotland was by leaving the UK.
This had an impact. As we began to receive daily polling, the crevasse between No and Yes narrowed to a crack. The Quad decided we should exercise much more influence on the campaign from London. Danny Alexander became the new unofficial head of the No campaign, chairing meetings every day.
The campaign began to attract criticism. The standard attack was that our campaign was too negative – that we were running ‘Project Fear’, scaremongering about the risks of separation. But we couldn’t let this throw us off our strategy. Andrew Cooper said most voters were not convinced that an independent Scotland would be a disaster, he wrote to me in August. Nor were they sure that independence would jeopardise the pound, jobs or pensions. If the frame of reference was love for Scotland, that would push undecided voters towards voting Yes, not No. What brought them to No was the undeniable fact that No was safe and Yes was risky. In other words: keep framing this as a practical choice more than a patriotic one.
This advice was reinforced by opinion at home.
Our long-standing nanny, Gita, had been with us since shortly after Ivan was born in 2002. When she was revising for her citizenship test, she asked me one of the questions: ‘What is the purpose of the cabinet in the government of the UK?’ and looked rather surprised when I replied, ‘I sometimes wonder.’ The cliché was true: we loved her like a member of the family, and when she left to have a baby with her lovely husband we missed everything from her company to her cooking.
We had to advertise for a replacement through an agency without saying where the position was. But we found the perfect person. A young Glaswegian go-getter, Michelle Legowski came to us after stints working on cruise liners. She seemed unfazed by our unusual circumstances, and slotted straight in.
She was also a great sounding-board for the referendum, especially because it was obvious that she was an undecided voter, and so one of the 30 per cent of Scots who would decide the outcome. When she handed over to me in the evening I’d ask her which way she was swaying. For her, as for the friends she’d been discussing the subject with on Facebook, it came down to very practical issues: pensions, pay, taxes, ease of travel. Her voting intention changed from day to day. That kept me focused on the Cooper strategy.
But then came the Balmoral weekend, and the heart-stopping crossover poll. For people to vote No, it wouldn’t be enough to contrast the risk with the status quo. We would have to offer something more.
Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling and Ed Miliband were proposing a cross-party initiative to show that the commitment to giving more powers to Scotland was genuine, and would be delivered quickly after the 2015 general election. This would be a ‘circuit breaker’ to arrest the impression of Yes momentum – a vision of change without the need for separation. The reply I scribbled to Andrew Dunlop, who set out the proposal, was unequivocal: ‘Whatever it takes!’
The truth was that to win the referendum we needed Labour voters. (As it turned out, our faith in Labour’s power in Scotland was misplaced. The party didn’t have the activists or the support it once did – as was proven the following year, when it was wiped out by the SNP at the general election.) It was no good Alistair Darling making another speech, or Ed Miliband writing an article. A big Labour figure would have to make a big intervention. Where was that big clunking fist when you needed it?
Gordon Brown told me he wanted to make the devolution promise more real by personally setting out a timetable. I agreed to it. And on the day after the Sunday Times poll shock, he made a speech in Midlothian announcing that very timetable.
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bsp; As he did so, I was in Downing Street holding a reception for business leaders. I had spent much of the time since the poll calling them up and urging, ‘You know independence would be terrible – so if you think it, you’ve got to say it.’ Many came out in support of a No vote – BP, Shell, Standard Life, Lloyds, Aviva, Prudential. But those who remained on the fence infuriated me. They didn’t have to be politically neutral, and I knew that separation would affect their business – so why not say it?
Ed Miliband then had a good idea. He, Nick Clegg and I should all go up to Scotland on Wednesday morning, leaving William Hague and Harriet Harman to deputise for us at PMQs. It would be unprecedented and dramatic.
I wanted my part of the visit to feel different from previous interventions, and Liz had found the perfect place. Scottish Widows was full of bright young staff with a focus on finance. Instead of lecturing them from a podium, I’d be sitting among them taking questions.
On the way there, I told Craig about what I wanted to say. ‘I’m thinking of saying you shouldn’t just vote for independence because you want to give the effing Tories a kick,’ I said. I wanted it to really hit home that this wasn’t a short-term, party-political decision. It wasn’t about the next five years, but the next century. ‘Go for it,’ he said. And I did.
Then, that Sunday, one week after the Sunday Times headline, the Queen spoke to some of those gathered outside Crathie Kirk, and said that she hoped Scots would ‘think very carefully’ about the vote. I was delighted.
The final Monday before polling day, after I chaired our usual 8.30 a.m. meeting, I asked Andrew Dunlop quietly, ‘We are going to be all right, aren’t we?’ He calmly replied, ‘Prime Minister, not only are we going to be all right, we’ll win by at least ten points.’ I thought: I don’t care about the exact numbers. Let it be 49–51 if it has to be. Just, please, let it keep our country together.
Later that morning I flew with Andrew to the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre for my final public intervention. My new friend and speech collaborator, Gordon Brown, made lots of comments on my script, in particular emphasising that voting No was a patriotically Scottish act.
Two days before the vote, we unveiled our last-ditch offering to Scotland. The three main UK party leaders all signed up to a further wave of devolution, which would devolve income tax and tax-raising powers. It was splashed across the Daily Record as ‘The Vow’. This was a repackaging of a promise made back in August, the only difference being that we committed to keeping the Barnett formula, which determines the size of Scotland’s annual grant from central government. It was successful in clarifying that healthcare spending was a decision for the Scottish government, finally trumping the SNP’s NHS card. It also halted the momentum of the Yes campaign in the final days.
On the eve of the poll, Gordon Brown made the final speech on behalf of Better Together. It was a strange feeling for me. I was moved by him. I was rooting for him.
As I walked down the stairs on the morning the Scottish people would be heading to the polls, I saw my Scotland special adviser Ramsay Jones, who was walking to the front door. ‘And …?’ I asked. ‘By ten points,’ he replied, echoing Andrew’s prediction of a few days before.
What do you do on a day when your country hangs in the balance? As Nancy was due to start secondary school the following year, Sam and I went to look around one option, Holland Park in west London. There I was reminded just how transformational independence for schools through academy status could be. Pupils were learning Latin and Greek. There was a sense of discipline and drive. It had echoes of the school I went to. And yet this was a co-educational comprehensive in the middle of London.
I returned to Downing Street, where the Saltire was flying at full mast.
The previous night, in George’s study, we had discussed a losing speech, which Ed was working on. ‘We’ll have to be best of friends, best of neighbours, best of allies, we’ll respect you,’ was the tone. Then we had a team meeting on the contents of the speech for a No vote, including William Hague, George and Jess Cunniffe, who was drafting it.
Still, I thought constantly about the possibility of a Yes vote. I had said publicly that I wouldn’t resign if we lost. I certainly didn’t want to make the referendum in Scotland a referendum on me. That would have been politically unwise when we needed so much Labour support. My true feelings were more complicated. The fact that I’d be the one who precipitated the end of our island story would hurt beyond belief. I saw a lot of senior colleagues that week – Philip Hammond, IDS, William. George said, ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t resign.’ Theresa May didn’t say anything like that. She possessed monarchic levels of neutrality – no one but Her Majesty played their cards closer to their chest.
All this was weighing on me that night, as camp beds were hauled into offices and Downing Street’s offices were turned into dorms. At about 10 p.m. we went to the open-plan press office, Gordon Brown’s old command centre, to watch the results come in.
As the turnout was revealed – nearly 85 per cent, higher than for any election in UK history – there was a panic that this might confound the opinion polls. But when Clackmannanshire declared at 1.30 a.m., with a solid majority for No, I told Craig I was going to bed, but that he should keep me posted.
I didn’t sleep. And when Craig texted a couple of hours later saying it was looking encouraging, I was straight back downstairs. It wasn’t the best moment to reappear: Dundee’s result came in, and it was one of the few cities to vote Yes. The lead we’d taken was closing. But Mark McInnes at the count reassured us.
Sure enough, after 4 a.m. the No votes kept rolling in. Two of the happiest hours of my life followed. Everything was going to be OK. At 6 a.m. Salmond conceded. I spoke to him on the phone, and a few minutes later I went out into Downing Street and made my speech: ‘The people of Scotland have spoken. It is a clear result. They have kept our country of four nations together. Like millions of other people, I am delighted.’
And truly I was. The final result was 55 per cent to 45 per cent. Our Union was safe. The question was settled.
One thing I’m glad I didn’t do was go straight up to Scotland. We had planned that I would do so, but that morning I felt that what had been intended as a gesture of unity might look like crowing, especially because Salmond had just resigned.
I came in for heavy criticism for bringing up the issue of ‘English votes for English laws’ in my victory speech. Days before, we had taken a decision to speak about fixing the longstanding wrong that Scottish MPs could vote on matters affecting only English constituencies, whereas, post-devolution, English MPs had no such reciprocal right. Few things exercised Conservative backbenchers more than this ‘West Lothian question’. I knew that after all the focus on pleasing and placating Scotland, the cry would go up: what about England?
It had always been on my mind – as far back as 2005 I had commissioned Ken Clarke to look at the issue. William thought we had to seize our moment and ensure that new powers for England moved in lockstep with powers for Scotland and Wales. Although George and Michael Gove were not in favour, we discussed the subject in detail during the preparation for the victory speech.
On the morning of victory, I chose my words carefully: ‘We have heard the voice of Scotland, and now the millions of voices of England must also be heard. The question of English votes for English laws – the so-called West Lothian question – requires a decisive answer.’ The idea that I could have ignored the issue altogether is nonsense, but I now wish I’d left it until party conference. Friday, 19 September 2014 was a day for magnanimity, nothing more.
In between the referendum and party conference, I had to go off to the UN General Assembly in New York. It was there that I did something else I wish I hadn’t done. As I walked through the Bloomberg headquarters with my friend Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, I confided in him about the whirlwind of the past few day
s. I said that the definition of relief was ringing the Queen and saying it was all right, and that ‘she purred down the line’. But I was being filmed, a microphone picked up my words, and they were around the world before you could say ‘royal pardon’. I later made a heartfelt apology to the Queen for commenting on our private exchange.
Five years on from the vote, I truly believe that while the referendum was a risk, it was the right risk. I feel even more strongly that the bigger risk would have been leaving the issue of Scottish independence to fester. The case for a referendum would have grown stronger, the bitterness would have become darker, the British government would eventually have been forced to hold it, by which time the case for independence would have been far greater. We have since seen in Catalonia what happens when a government mishandles the will for a vote on self-determination.
I believe I was also right to take the risk on the terms of the referendum (i.e. give in to almost everything, except a straightforward ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question). Nationalists love grievance, but there was nothing about the referendum they could call foul play on. It was their timing, their franchise, their question – and they lost.
I was right to push the respect agenda, including respecting the fact that the Scots had chosen the SNP as their main party. As I write, they’ve been in power for twelve years, and the shine is beginning to wear off. Nationalist parties are often bad at governing, and they have done a good job of illustrating this in Scotland.
For the Record Page 70