Clarification, 22.36: Owing to a transcription error, Alistair Darling was incorrectly quoted using the words “blood and soil nationalism” to describe the SNP’s “non-civic nationalism”. The phrase was raised in conversation but not used directly by Mr Darling. This is the disputed exchange:
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In the midst of a constitutional crisis so deep that the prime minister feels uncomfortable about visiting Scotland to make the case for the Union of Great Britain, it’s crunch-time for the Better Together campaign. Its leader, Alistair Darling, certainly seems to be fighting back in an interview with New Statesman editor Jason Cowley in this week’s magazine. Darling decries Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond’s “North Korean response” to Scottish Ukip voters, challenges him to a debate, and laments the “culture of intimidation” among Scottish nationalists.
Alex Salmond’s behaving like former North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il
He said on the BBC that people voted Ukip in Scotland because English TV was being beamed into Scotland. This was a North Korean response. This is something that Kim Jong-il would say. And this is the same BBC for which we all pay our licence fee, and we all enjoy the national output as well as the Scottish output.
On a culture of intimidation
and the menace of cybernats
Darling speaks of a “culture of intimidation” and the menace of the “cybernats”, a swarm of co-ordinated online commenters who traduce anyone with whom they disagree.
When I started doing this two years ago I didn’t believe you’d be in a situation in a country like ours where people would be threatened for saying the wrong thing,” Darling says. “Business people keep telling me that it is happening as a matter of fact. They say to me, ‘We’d like to come out and support you but . . .’ It’s not just the cybernats and what they do and the things they call our supporters. People in business are frightened to speak out. I was speaking to a senior academic who told me that he’d been warned by a senior Scottish nationalist that if he carried on speaking like this, it would be a pity for him. It’s a real, real problem for us. We ought to be able to express our views without fear of the consequences.
I haven’t been threatened – they wouldn’t threaten me – but if you are a member of the public and you are trashed for having your say, what do you do? You stop it. No one wants to live in a country where this sort of thing goes on. A culture has been allowed to develop here. This is not a modern civic Scotland.
Challenging Alex Salmond to a debate
He wants to turn it into a contest between Scotland and England, which is why he wants a televised debate with David Cameron. That should not happen. I want to debate him. I’m ready to. But he’s refusing to enter into discussions with the television companies – STV, the BBC, Sky and Channel 4. It’s all being cut very fine. It’s not too late. I challenge him to a debate.
The Scottish referendum will be unlike any other vote
This is a vote that’s not like a normal general election. This is something the nationalists have to win only once, by one vote. It is irrevocable. You would never come back. If you did come back you’d be coming back in a completely unfavourable negotiating position. It wouldn’t happen.
Fear of a black swan event
While Darling isn’t concerned about any jingoism following the England football team performing well in the World Cup, or patriotic feeling swelling from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games this year, he does fear the unknown.
If England do well it will make no difference whatsoever. The Commonwealth Games will be a great event for Glasgow and for Scotland but it won’t determine how people vote. It won’t decide the outcome of the referendum. I’ve got no concern about those events any more than I have about the Bannockburn celebrations; most people think, umm, that was 700 years ago.
But what worry you are the unknowns. Something could happen…
The SNP is not a nationalist movement
It [the SNP] is a national party. Scotland is not a colony, it never has been. . . when it came to colonialism, Scotland was up there with the rest of them. The SNP does not offer a civic nationalism . . . If you ask any nationalist, ‘Are there any circumstances in which you would not vote to be independent?’ they would say the answer has got to be no. It is about how people define themselves through their national identity.
Jason Cowley interviewed Alex Salmond last year, who in a wide-ranging interview criticised Ed Miliband’s leadership, among other things:
I’d agree with the polls that he’s lagging some way behind his party. What’s Labour’s central problem? People still blame them for the financial situation in the country. That’s essential. It’s the ‘blame for the economic crisis, stupid’ argument... He can’t forswear the past when he has the past sitting next to him.
Salmond also gave a New Statesman lecture in March 2014 entitled “Scotland’s Future in Scotland’s Hands”. Watch highlights here.
Update: The SNP has now called on Darling to apologise for his comparison of Alex Salmond to Kim Jong-il. A spokesperson for Salmond said:
“Alistair Darling demeans himself and his colleagues in the No campaign with these pathetic, puerile remarks for which he should now apologise.
“The debate on Scotland’s future is one that deserves far, far better than boorish and abusive personal insults, as do the people of Scotland.
“Mr Darling has called for a positive debate free from abuse – he should now aim to live up to that pledge, and stop trying to divert attention from the real issues.”
To read the full interview with Alistair Darling, as well as articles by Mary Beard, John Gray, Paul Mason and Bryan Appleyard, purchase a copy of the magazine or subscribe on iPad or iPhone.
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