More can, should, and will be written about the years that changed Scottish politics, but Joe Pike’s Project Fear is an excellent first look back at the two campaigns that attempted to stem the seemingly unstoppable rise of nationalism in Scotland.
That the second word of the prologue is a four letter expletive should come as no surprise. Pike has interviewed key players and staff to get a behind the scenes look at the Better Together and Scottish Labour campaigns. The soap opera is more often the focus than an analysis of the campaign strategy. Campaign director Blair McDougall and director of communications Rob Shorthouse are given a particularly tough time as the backbiting and infighting is laid bare. An advantage of Pike’s use of interviews with key figures is the inclusion of consistently entertaining anecdotes that would be missed out in a drier analysis. Of the campaign’s Glasgow headquarters in the bleak Savoy Shopping Centre it is said, ‘It was bizarre. We were in the upstairs of a mangy shopping centre, full of mobile phone kiosks and discount shops’.
The writing is, in places, excellent. Passages on the discovery by staff that a UK Government minister has been quoted demolishing the campaign’s central argument about currency union, and the chapter covering the last few days of the referendum campaign – appropriately titled ‘Panic Stations’ – builds to a brilliant crescendo of polling day. Both are thrilling to read.
Like any true horror story, the big scare comes in the third act as Pike turns his attention to Scottish Labour’s general election campaign. Once again we go behind the scenes as the awful truth slowly dawns on the party in Scotland. The Scottish National party is presented almost as a mythical Hydra, with campaigns constantly cutting off one head to find three have grown back in its place. A key struggle for both campaigns was the struggle to get voters to stop shouting them down, let alone actively listen. The tone is notably darker. Murphy is said to have apologised, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t fix this’, as Scottish Labour lost seat, after seat, after seat. Although there is still some dark humour as veteran MP Tom Clarke declares, without a hint of irony, ‘It’s 1997 again!’ There is little in the way of analysis of strategy, but by this point in the book we are used to the style and,if anything, the points Pike picks up on the most feel more at place as we watch hopes for a positive result crumble.
The referendum victory may for some years be the high watermark of progressive politics in Scotland. The lack of bounce despite the election of both a young and enthusiastic Scottish leader in Kezia Dugdale, and Jeremy Corbyn who is claimed necessary to win back Scotland, demonstrate that the challenges facing Scottish Labour are immense. They will not be overcome by sops to a more traditional policy platform. Labour has not lost votes to the left, it has lost votes to a broader sense of identity politics. Nicola Sturgeon’s legion of MPs did not pledge to nationalise railways or energy companies, they pledged to ‘stand up for Scotland’. It is this idea that saying nice things is just as good as doing nice things that Labour must be able to counter in Scotland to have any chance of success in the near to medium future.
Project Fear raises more questions than it answers about where we go from here, though it elucidates the dramatic shift in Scottish politics excellently and entertainingly. Pike has made a good first pass at analysing the year that changed Scottish politics, and has made the initial entry in an area of writing that will ultimately become more crowded. For all its gallows humour and thrilling moments, it presents a stark picture of a Scotland that has become all too familiar – and one from which the way back is far from clear.
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Josh Graham is a former organiser for Better Together