Unlike a slightly more high-profile reunion event, the ticketing website for the Scottish referendum tenth anniversary show is not expected to crash. But there will no doubt be much looking back in anger at the IMAX theatre at the Science Centre in Glasgow on 14 February as ‘the stars’ (it says) of the 2014 referendum gather to ‘reflect’ on the defining moment in their lives and ‘outline their hopes for the future’.
In a fine Scottish tradition, they clearly still see themselves as the moral, if not actual, victors of 2014
The headliner (surprise, surprise) is Alex Salmond, who will be in discussion with STV political journalist Bernard Ponsonby. From the flyer, it looks as if the supporting cast will feature Fergus Ewing, Joanna Cherry, the editor of the influential pro-indie blog Wings over Scotland Stu Campbell et al. Tickets cost 25 quid which includes a ‘meet and greet’ after the show – and that’s ‘greet’ as in say hello to, not in the Scottish sense of weep like a bairn.
Notable, by their absence, surely, will be the biggest star of all in the firmament of the Scottish independence movement, former first minister Nicola Sturgeon. Indeed, it is unlikely that anyone from the current hierarchy of the discredited and scandal wracked SNP, now so reviled that many hardcore separatists sincerely wish for its obliteration at the earliest possible opportunity, will grace the event with an appearance.
The title of the show ‘The Aye’s Still Have It!’ is revealing – suggesting that ten years on the hardcore ‘yessers’ are still filled to the brim with the same indestructible sense of manifold destiny that fueled them through the heady run up to the vote in 2014. In a fine Scottish tradition, they clearly still see themselves as the moral, if not actual, victors of 2014.
And therein lies the problem, unlikely to be addressed at this nostalgic love in/mutual therapy session. The ‘ayes’ didn’t have it in 2014 and certainly don’t have it now, if ‘it’ is to be understood as the wholehearted support of the Scottish people for independence. The circus has clearly moved on and the show may well be over.
Consider the venues for these shindigs: the IMAX in Glasgow seats 370 people and the Social Hub Glasgow (where indie newspaper the National is holding another anniversary event) seats 188. This is a very far cry indeed from the glory days when tens of thousands of the devoted would muster for rallies that really did have the appearance of a mass movement with a genuine appetite for change.
With the SNP seemingly moribund, Salmond’s small Alba party and the even smaller ISP (Independence for Scotland party) are now the flag bearers. Alba got 11,000 votes in the 2024 election and every one of their candidates lost their deposit. The ISP only fielded two candidates, with similar consequences.
None of that will unduly trouble the faithful, of course, who are immune to doubt and have an endless capacity for spinning the apparent decline. My favourite, from a passionate pro-indie journalist, was ‘Today is not about numbers’, after a mere handful turned up to an independence march in Dundee. It brings to mind the insouciant hutzpah of Ian Faith, manager of the self-destructing rock band Spinal Tap: ‘our appeal has become more selective’.
The straw manically clutched by what’s left of the true believers are the polls on independence, which consistently put support for separation at close to 50 per cent. But, for one thing, the figures generally exclude (crucially) the ‘don’t knows’, who habitually break for the union. There are also the awkward questions of why, if these polls truly represent a desire to break up the UK, as opposed to a tenuous ‘yeah, go on then, sometime, somehow’ aspiration, voters aren’t a) demanding another referendum (support for which is much lower); b) flocking to the Alba party; or c) turning up for any rallies.
Don’t expect these questions to be directly addressed at the IMAX. But with the big bad bogeyman of the Tories in Westminster now gone and with it much of the energy from the independence project – which always had a strong element of Tory/Anglo-phobia about it – the more realistic will surely acknowledge the need for a fresh, positive and compelling message. And it will need considerable amplification to drown out the competing narratives around the independence movement and its ‘stars’ which are likely to focus on legal rather than constitutional issues.
The movement will also need to jettison its crazies, the sort that post seemingly incessantly about how Scotland is a ‘colony’ of England; who witter on about the ‘claim of right’; promote conspiracy theories about senior SNP figures being MI5 agents; urge appeals to the UN; or trumpet a unilateral declaration of independence as the ‘only way forward’.
If that’s the tenor of the debate, unionists can rest easy. And the IMAX theatre, whose technology is designed to create an outsized hyper vivid unreality for a credulous audience, will have proved to be an appropriate choice of venue.
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