All politicians are very good at spreading myths in an attempt to skew the debate their way – none better, in fact, than the SNP. There is one myth, in particular, that has had a lot of air recently and it really has to be challenged.
It was asserted several times by Alex Salmond this week and then mimicked and repeated by SNP politician after SNP politician in the hours and days to come as if, somehow, repetition would make it true.
And it is this: “Scotland doesn’t need London politicians/David Cameron coming up to Scotland and telling us what to do. Those days are gone.”
Now, I have been through the prime minister’s speech from yesterday in detail and I can’t find any part of it which even hints at telling the Scots what to do.
This assertion of London ordering the Scots around might have been the case 30 years ago when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, but Mr Cameron’s speech was probably the most humble made by a prime minister in Scotland in living memory.
It was a defence of the Union from a personal point of view. Mr Cameron did not tell Scots which way to vote or what to do, he merely set out why he wanted to defend the Union.
Yet, listening to SNP politicians, anybody would think the prime minister came up to Scotland and ordered the Scots around in an imperious, dogmatic way because it suits the SNP to dress it up like that.
I was on a BBC Scotland debate this afternoon with Graham Houston, the leader of the SNP group on Stirling Council, and he repeated the line about not needing Mr Cameron to come up here and tell us what to do. It has so obviously become the SNP line on this issue that everybody in the party is using it – even though it is not actually an accurate reflection of what is going on.
The real problem is that the debate is being warped, deliberately, by the SNP – and it does nobody any favours.
Yes, the SNP might generate some short-term gain from some knee-jerk anti-London, anti-Cameron feeling – but, as it sinks in that the SNP are not accurately portraying what is really going on, so that will change.
This is a crucial debate on Scotland’s future. We deserve to have it argued properly, maturely and honestly, and spinning what somebody else says to suit narrow short-termism does it a disservice.
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