A lesson for Alex Salmond from George Orwell

I’ve written a piece for today’s Scotsman noting that there are some parallels between Scotland’s independence stushie and the pre-Iraq War rammy a decade ago. Only this time it’s the nationalists who are, if you will allow the comparison, the neoconservatives. Just as pro-war advocates back then (and I was one of them) cheerfully labelled anyone who opposed the war of being “objectively pro-Saddam” so the nationalists today essentially argue that anyone opposed to independence is anti-Scottish and, implicitly, objectively so.

This is as tedious as it is stupid and the kind of thing liable to further hamper the party’s already faltering attempts to win what the Americans call high information voters (that is: those on above-average incomes). Support for independence declines with wealth and this is, increasingly I think, a problem for Alex Salmond and the nationalists. They are not, at present, getting through to these voters. And part of their problem must lie in the approach they are taking.