The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever

However, the guys in the clubhouse are very keen to see me, and after a few drinks I end up as an honorary member. It should be said that the folk in the bar are bang on a key YES demographic – mainly middle-aged, working-class men – but, even so, this crowd is a pretty easy and enthusiastic conversion to the cause.

I tell Geoff Aberdein in a phone call afterwards that, regardless of a general lack of encouragement in polls, I am confident that we have a real shot at this. The 100-day coverage also reinforces my view that as we move into the campaign period proper then the inevitable quickening of the pace will be of great benefit to YES.

Tuesday 10 June

I phone in to the YES campaign meeting tonight and find them a bit downbeat. Turns out that they’ve had access to a TNS opinion poll, which shows little or no movement to YES.

It is always a wonder to me that people in politics allow their morale to be affected by the latest opinion poll, instead of trusting their own political antennae.

It’s hard to give a pep talk down the phone, but I’m open and direct with my feelings: that we might not be there or even close, but everything is possible at this point. We’re not close to winning but we CAN win and the campaign has to believe that. Part of this confidence comes from my informal canvass in Nigg Bay Golf Club. My gut tells me that things are going pretty well.

Wednesday 11 June

Could be said that we held a Gunn to our own heads today.

Stayed in Strichen to cover the Oil and Gas UK conference in the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre. The speech goes well and I’m ready to face the cameras when I get a pretty panicky call from Geoff Aberdein to brief me on a self-inflicted wound.

For reasons (not altogether clear), my highly experienced special adviser [SPAD] Campbell Gunn decided to email the Daily Telegraph to inform them that Clare Lally, the ‘ordinary mother’ who featured in their coverage of the 100-day Better Together launch, was actually a member of Labour’s shadow cabinet and former Labour Provost of Glasgow Pat Lally’s daughter.

The first suggestion is correct, the second total nonsense. I know Clare personally. She is the mother of a quadriplegic daughter and a carers’ champion.

All of which wouldn’t have caused much of a stir in normal times, but what on earth Campbell thought he was doing emailing the Daily Telegraph is beyond my ken.

The paper is the self-appointed ringleader of a madcap old-fashioned media preoccupied in their conspiracy to discredit the YES campaign and all our works. There is therefore no point whatsoever in engaging with them or wasting time on them or explaining ourselves to them. Still less in sticking out our chin and letting them hit it.

The Telegraph, true to form, conflates Campbell’s foolish email with a story of the online abuse of Clare to concoct an attack. This is yet another episode in the claims of systematic online abuse from the YES side by so-called ‘cybernats’. In fact it is not ‘nats’, it is nuts. I deal with the TV interviews easily enough. I’m also asked about J. K. Rowling, who has given a million pounds to Better Together and has also been attacked online.

It is pretty obvious that the Clare and J. K. stories will now centre on the online abuse and there is next to nothing we can do about it. This story now has all the ingredients to take it beyond the Telegraph obsessions and into the tabloids and TV.

The connection with politics is coincidental. Internet trolls get their kicks by attacking anyone in the news about anything. In addition, the only research on the politics of this is by a Strathclyde University academic, Dr Mark Shephard, who has concluded in his interim report that the YES campaign is more of a target than a source of internet abuse.

However, the truth is that there is no high ground in this matter: any society and any subject is fair game for the pathetic clowns who get their kicks by abusing other people online behind the shield of anonymity. Most claims of the NO campaign don’t touch us: they are too exaggerated or just plain silly. This might.

I instruct Campbell to apologise at once and to make it clear that he distances himself from the online abuse of anyone at any time. Of course the ability to stop internet trolls is non-existent.

Let there be no doubt about the reasoning behind the Daily Telegraph attack. They would like nothing better than to force us off social media where we are dominating and back to a conventional campaign which we would inevitably lose.

Ironically the latest Survation poll from the Labour-supporting Daily Record confirms my hunch about the way the wind has been blowing, with 46 per cent YES and a big lead for the SNP in the party ratings for Holyrood. In my opinion it overstates YES support but does give an indication of the direction of travel.

* The SNP 79 Group was a ginger group set up after the rout in the 1979 election which argued for a declared left-of-centre programme from the SNP. One of its campaigns in 1981–82 was in support of workforce occupations of factories in the face of industrial closures. Although the 79 Group was defeated internally, many of its ideas strongly influenced the development of the SNP and many key members, including the author, went on to achieve high office.

The 100 Days

Day One: Thursday 12 June

‘Campbellgate’ duly dominates First Minister’s questions and I repel boarders as best as I can. Even for the rough old trade of politics there is something pretty unsavoury about today’s line of questioning. All of the opposition leaders know Campbell and indeed have known him for many years. They all said wonderful things about him when he collected his well-merited lifetime achievement award for journalism earlier this year. They all know that his email has been taken out of context by the Telegraph and that he had nothing whatsoever to do with online abuse. Yet here they all are lining up to present him as the devil incarnate and baying to end his career in an ignominious sacking!

Ruth Davidson even compared him to Donald Dewar’s SPAD John Rafferty, who was sacked in 1999 for allegedly making up death threats against then Labour Health Minister Susan Deacon. I have no intention whatsoever of sacking Campbell. My administration has been grounded on loyalty to colleagues. Even when they make silly mistakes. Leaders who fling people overboard can’t lead.

I call Campbell in at 5 p.m. and administer a formal written warning, only the second one for a SPAD in seven years. The first was for an unfortunate who managed to leave Cabinet papers in a pub. The rules drawn up in the aftermath of the fall of Gordon Brown’s spinner Damian McBride (resigned when caught trying to peddle made-up rumours about the private lives of Tory politicians) are poorly and loosely drafted. This seems the proportionate and fair action to take.

Day Two: Friday 13 June

Today is dominated by the highest YES poll so far – and meeting the real Inspector Rebus.

Launching the reindustrialisation strategy in Dunfermline at Greenfield Systems Ltd, a company which is a main supplier to the Falkirk bus company Alexander Dennis. It’s a pretty good document drawn up by our economics team and the SPAD Ewan Crawford, who has done an excellent job.

Ewan is the son of the late Douglas Crawford, a brilliant and mercurial SNP MP from the 1970s, and Joan Burnie, the doyenne of Scottish agony aunts. This family background may explain Ewan’s permanent hangdog demeanour. He gives the impression of being a melancholy chap in a constant state of anguish about something or other. It may be that he acts like a political sin eater – his worried looks serve to ease the anxiety of everyone else in the team.

At any rate it will be interesting to see how much this substantial document receives in terms of publicity compared with the contrived candy-floss of cyber abuse.

On the way back to Bute House I get the results of our own latest Panelbase poll which has YES up to 48 per cent – the highest in the series. I suggest to Kevin Pringle that the Sunday Herald and the Scottish Sun might be the best release points for a neck-and-neck poll. Rather like the Survation figures, I don’t think we are anything like as close as this poll suggests, but we are certainly in this game.

The artist Gerard Burns comes in with a choice of two portraits of me. I like the one he has set in Bute House, which will be auctioned for charity during the Commonwealth Games. The idea is called 14 for 14 – with 14 prominent Scots as his subjects and all proceeds going to 14 different charities. I choose CLIC Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, which arranges family support and respite and which has a wonderful base in Prestwick, Ayrshire.

Gerard painted The Rowan, the picture which dominates my office in the Scottish Parliament and which has become one of the most famous paintings in the country. I am interviewed in front of it pretty constantly.

In 1998 Gerard was a struggling young artist and schoolteacher who received the commission of his life, the chance to have one of his pictures hung in the new parliament’s temporary home in the General Assembly building on the Mound. He put his heart and soul into the work and painted a group of people carrying a huge saltire set against a Glasgow background. The picture is actually about hope and the rowan sprig in the hand of the beautiful young girl in the picture is a symbol of that hope. They are a family group travelling, perhaps to Hampden for a football match (very hopefully) or perhaps to George Square for a peace rally. Wherever they are going they are travelling hopefully.

All of this potent symbolism was too much for the powers that used to be in the Scottish Parliament, and they sent him a letter saying that they no longer required his very big saltire. Since Gerard binned the letter I cannot positively identify the culprit who believed that the artist’s national flag was too big for the national parliament. Suffice to say, I have my suspicions.

At any rate the world spun on its axis and Gerard ceased to be a struggling young schoolteacher and became one of Scotland’s most successful and most collectable artists. Meanwhile in 2007 I became First Minister and was on the Channel 4 Morning Line programme for the Ayr Gold Cup. Alan Macdonald, the owner of Ayr racecourse and a devotee of both Robert and Gerard Burns, had positioned The Rowan so that the giant saltire was reflected over the racecourse like a great rainbow. Suitably impressed, I asked about the picture and was told the rather sad story about the struggling young artist who had been so cruelly snubbed by the Parliament.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we can put that to rights as I have just moved into a new office.’ And so it came to pass that Gerard loaned the picture to the government for as long as I was First Minister: a fine and generous gesture, but not a foolish one. One day Gerard will receive back into his possession one of the most famous and sought-after paintings in the country.

I choose the Bute House portrait because the other one, based on a New York Times picture, looks a shade on the messianic side. Gerard kindly offers me the messianic one, but in office I can’t accept personal gifts. I suggest instead that he donates it to the SNP or the YES campaign, where messianic pictures are in great demand!

Later in the evening I have dinner with Ken Stott who, when portraying the detective Rebus, is a most convincing Hibernian supporter. He turns out to be a Heart of Midlothian supporter like myself – so a Jambo as well as a really interesting guy with a great grasp of politics.

‘How do you play Rebus’s Hibee football loyalties with such conviction?’ I ask.

‘It’s called acting!’ says Ken.

Day Three: Saturday 14 June

I’m hoping that the Commonwealth Games will produce some new Scots sporting greats – like my boyhood hero from the 1970 Games, Lachie Stewart. I meet Lachie and a range of other Games greats when we greet the Commonwealth baton at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh.

I am able to tell him exactly where I was when he out-sprinted the great Oz athlete Ron Clarke and the rest of the field to win gold for Scotland. It was a Saturday and I was a ‘junior agent’ (paperboy) for the Edinburgh Evening News. Our ‘senior agent’ (my boss) came to collect the money at my pal Alan Grant’s house. However, we were all watching the 10,000-metre final and he sat down to join us.

‘Have you ever thought of absconding?’ I asked him, nodding towards the cash which lay scattered in small denominations of old money on the Grant living-room carpet.

‘You mean with someone’s wife?’ came the enigmatic reply. Senior agents were not recruited for their extensive vocabulary.

Lachie tells me that in those days you just had to fit in preparation for big meetings as and when you could, but normal life had to come first – in his case his work as a dental technician in Edinburgh. In my boyhood there was a character in the Hotspur comic called Alf Tucker, who was known as ‘the tough of the track’. Alf used to finish working on building sites, eat a quick fish supper and then demolish prima donna athletes (usually very large Germans or very flash Americans) in the big races. Lachie Stewart is the real-life ‘tough of the track’ and all the more admirable for that.

Ron Clarke, in contrast, was a professional in all but name. He said later that he didn’t even know who Lachie was as he sprinted past him. Lachie Stewart is a Scottish hero. Let’s hope for a few more in Glasgow.

The mood at the Commonwealth Stadium is great. Lots of families, lots of saltires and lots of fun.

This is the second time this week I’ve felt a real quickening of the public mood which makes me think that the improved poll position recorded in both Panelbase and Survation may be a bit nearer the mark than the much poorer ratings of System Three, MORI or YouGov. Or alternatively that the nature of the panel polls means that they may be measuring what is likely to happen among the more politically aware rather than what has already happened in the general population.

It’s a day of sport, as I then go to Fir Park, Motherwell, to watch Scotland’s women play Sweden in a World Cup match. I wanted to support the Scotland women but also thought this might be a convenient place to be when asked if I was watching the England–Italy match. Eight years ago my immediate predecessor Jack McConnell made a complete fool of himself by supporting England’s opponents at the World Cup. This has never been my inclination, although I do subscribe to a theory that an extended England run during the tournament would be a big positive for the YES campaign.

Unfortunately, I think there is very little chance at all that the English nation will be led into an overdrive of patriotic fervour. Their team has a dodgy defence and an ageing midfield. The one hope for them lies in their exciting young players, but the pool of talent of first-team, first-rate English players in one of the best leagues in the world is actually small.

The Scotland–Sweden game is great fun and, cheered on by an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 or so, the Scottish women give a better and bigger team a real game. Ifeoma Dieke, the Scottish number 4, is a truly marvellous player – not hugely quick but a fantastic reader of the game, rather in the mould of ex-Hearts, Everton, Rangers and Scotland defender David Weir. I hope I get the chance to meet her one day – with any luck at the World Cup finals in Canada next year.

On my way to Fir Park I’d heard that the ICM poll in Scotland on Sunday has YES at 45, up three points, but, true to their normal dismal form, the well-initialled SOS is leading on the idea that families across the nation are falling out with relatives as a result of the referendum process. What utter piffle.

Most papers (around thirty titles in all in Scotland) are hostile to independence because their predominantly London-based newspaper groups judge it to be in their interests to be hostile. Or at least they consider the idea of independence to be against their interests. However, the Scotsman and its sister paper Scotland on Sunday are on a suicide mission.

Andrew Neil once ran the European newspaper on an anti-European editorial and it did not last too long. Similarly, the Scotsman could survive, indeed prosper, with any editorial line – left-wing, right-wing, Liberal, Seventh Day Adventist, if it wished.

The only thing the Scotsman cannot be is unreliable on the national question, and yet that is exactly what it is. The endgame of that approach is certain. The Scotsman will disappear from the newsstands and on to the internet before long.

Back home in Strichen I arrive in time to see the second half of a pretty average Italian side cantering to a close (but still comfortable) victory over England. As I suspected YES will have to look elsewhere for a campaign boost!

Day Four: Sunday 15 June

Today I get to do what I enjoy most in politics: talking directly to people.

Taking part in the Colin Mackay phone-in for Bauer radio allows me to break out of the political bubble. That kind of contact is one of the real joys of the campaign. There are a number of points raised about the Health Service. I will make sure that the individual cases raised are properly pursued by my private office.

The Sunday Herald and the Scottish Sun on Sunday give us a good show on the apparent tightening of the polls. However, most of the papers do a post-mortem of the week’s episode of cyber abuse as if it was a YES prerogative. Interestingly, in the entire hour of the phone-in programme nobody wants to talk about ‘cybernats’ but about the Health Service and the economy. The lesson for the campaign is to keep on our own agenda and our own medium to deliver the message. We must not allow the old press to dictate the themes of this new campaign.

Day Five: Monday 16 June

Up at the crack of dawn. Destination: Orkney Islands. We have chosen Orkney to launch Our Islands Our Future.

Derek Mackay, the Minister for Local Government, has guided negotiations between the Scottish government and the three island councils* with skill, and the launch goes extremely well. The document and the process which has preceded it is an attempt to galvanise support for independence in the islands by providing the assurance (and the reality) that the process of local decision-making should not stop at Edinburgh but be community-focused across the whole of Scotland. It is important to the independence movement that we carry support in all of Scotland.

Visited Kirkwall Grammar School as part of the trip. It’s a ‘school for the future’ and I am greatly impressed by staff and pupils.

The new schools across Scotland are going to stand the nation in good stead. Actually they are the same design – for example, Kirkwall Grammar looks to my untrained eye very similar in terms of layout to Lasswade High, in Midlothian – and all the better for that. More than 460 new schools have been built or renovated since 2007 (almost a fifth of the entire estate) compared with just 328 during the first eight years of devolution. All of this has been achieved against a huge cut in capital spending and is a triumph of organisation and ingenuity over funding availability.

Day Six: Tuesday 17 June

Worried that Vladimir Putin might cause me problems – but boosted by an Englishman calling for a YES vote.

We were still in Orkney and Donna Heddle, former SNP candidate in Orkney and wife of the council convener, had arranged a lunchtime meeting at virtually no notice – and forty people immediately turn up. A chap, originally from Nottingham, tells me how he and his wife thank their lucky stars every morning for being in Orkney. He is a firm YES supporter but would just like to hear more people with his accent speaking up for the cause.

He is absolutely right!

This came after the first-ever Cabinet meeting convened from a school for the future. The Infant Cremation Commission report from Lord Bonomy was due out. This report follows the discovery that over many years babies’ ashes had been disposed of at Mortonhall Crematorium in Edinburgh without the knowledge of parents. I had promised the parents that I would chair the Cabinet that discussed the report. I was determined to keep my word and therefore I chaired the Cabinet over Skype from Kirkwall Grammar while my colleagues were in Edinburgh. High-tech stuff from a school for the future.

I hope to progress this sensitive issue through building on the excellent work of former Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini. As in everything she does, Elish has adopted a model approach and has earned the confidence of the parents affected by Mortonhall, where this depressing lack of humanity and dereliction of duty were discovered. If we can apply her comprehensive look across all of Scotland then we might implement Bonomy’s recommendations and secure the information, explanation and apology that the parents are due for their own treatment at the hands of officialdom.

This would avoid the long process of a public inquiry which can seldom, if ever, provide a satisfactory explanation for individuals as opposed to key investigations of policy. What public inquiries do provide, however, is a dripping roast for less than scrupulous legal companies.

Now to Putin. Flew back to Edinburgh to hold a meeting with the Ukrainian Community. I’m expecting a difficult discussion, since some had taken severe umbrage at an interview which I had conducted with Alistair Campbell for GQ earlier in the year.

In it Campbell had trapped me into saying what I ‘admired’ about Vladimir Putin. In fact I had been rather judicious in what I said, but that is not how it was reported. At any rate I needn’t have worried. The meeting goes well and we all part firm friends.

Day Seven: Wednesday 18 June

I was only here for the beer. Not drinking it but spreading the word about the exceptional entrepreneurship of a couple of lads from Fraserburgh, James Watt and Martin Dickie, who employ hundreds of people producing and selling great real beers with their firm BrewDog.

They’re giving a presentation at the Scottish Economic Forum and I find out that they have a bar in São Paulo, Brazil.

This is a great way to kick off the forum. Firstly I say it is nice to know that Scotland will be represented at the World Cup in some capacity, and secondly that it is reassuring to know that supporters of every nation – none in particular, mind – will be able to drown their sorrows in excellent beer now brewed in Ellon, Aberdeenshire!

I also raised a laugh by describing my recent visit to the Coca-Cola factory in East Kilbride which was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. One of that plant’s many achievements is to take charge of most of the commemorative bottles that Coca-Cola produce for the World Cup and the Olympic Games. Thanks to Coca-Cola executive Jim Fox they even produced one for Scotland’s Homecoming in 2009, when Robert Burns became the first person in world history to feature on the famous bottle.

In the presence of the company’s top executives I was taken around the impressive plant in a golf buggy by one of the workers, John McCafferty.

As we passed the World Cup bottle line, McCafferty said: ‘As you will know, we in East Kilbride produce the commemorative bottles. You will also know that Scotland, as a nation, decided NOT to participate in this year’s World Cup in Brazil. However, such is our generosity of spirit here in East Kilbride that we still produce the bottles for the rest of the planet.’

One of the Coca-Cola top guys turned to me and asked: ‘Is that right? You guys decided not to go? Was it a protest?’

‘Let’s call it East Kilbride irony,’ I replied.

Day Eight: Thursday 19 June

Everyone’s getting their knickers in a twist about the cost of setting up the governmental structures of an independent Scotland.