Scottish Independence: Can’t We do Better Than This Dismal Campaign?

Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York state (and father of the present governor) is perhaps these days most famous for his quip that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. Sometimes, anyway. Scotland’s independence referendum campaign, at present, doesn’t even rise to the level of William McGonagle’s execrable verse. Most of the prose is stale and hackneyed guff too.

This is the subject of my Think Scotland column this week. An argument that should, in theory, be mildly exciting is instead – at least for now – failing to deliver:

My sense is that many of the people paying most attention to this campaign are the people most likely to be depressed by its current content. They ask “Is this all there is?” They wonder if it can’t be better, more enlightening, more elevated, more inspirational than this? What, in the end, are we fighting for?

It is unrealistic to expect a referendum campaign of this import to be conducted without a reasonable share of tendentious nit-picking and outright mendacity.