I’ve just watched a passionate, informed debate about politics taking place on a street corner between three ordinary people. I’ve never seen that before. I should be thrilled, but instead I’m not. Why?
That debate followed the first bad language and bad feeling I’ve personally witnessed while following campaigners from both sides of the Scottish independence debate around in Glasgow and Lanarkshire. I was with two ‘Yes’ activists, Jim Flynn and Neil Molloy, in Kelvin today, watching them delivering leaflets to residents of the gorgeous tenement blocks near the river.
Most of those who opened the door were friendly: a Green ‘Yes’ voter, a cheery young mother backing independence, a woman leaning to ‘No’ who was happy to chat for 10 minutes whether freedom from Westminster really was all that, and a couple of men who said that ‘whatever you tell me or put through my door, you won’t change my mind.
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