Lorraine Mann at the Great Debate, Feb 12 1995.
| 'We know what your first choice is. We have independence, devolution or the status quo. What is your second choice?' Lorraine Mann at the Great Debate, Feb 12 1995. | |
The Scotsman's Great Debate between Alex Salmond for Independence and George Robertson for devolution was held in the Royal High School, Edinburgh on Sunday 12 February 1995. It was criticised by some due to the absence of Ian Lang to defend the status quo. Alex Salmond later said 'George Robertson's arguments and language showed exactly why Ian Lang wasn't there. He didn't have to be, because nobody could have been more Unionist than George.The debate showed just how out of touch with Scotland New Labour are. With 50 per cent of Labour voters backing the independence option, Labour are out of touch even with those who currently support them.'
The Straw view - possibly a Home Secretary's view after all - stresses Westminster's primacy and the importance of sovereignty which has not been divided. His view and the prevailing view in Scotland can be reconciled, rather in the way that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister can be reconcilled on Europe - that is, in a way which is not entirely convincing, because it ignores the profound differences in tone and emphasis.
Throughout the debate George Robertson was dealing, as he laid out the details of his scheme, with the lurking knowledge that even after all the work that has been done it is going to have to be sold anew to the many Labour MPs from outside Scotland who will have flooded into Westminster if there is to be a Blair government. They do not know of the intricasies which lay behind the debate, nor can they be expected to share the attitude which has been successfully embedded in Scottish Labour in the last 15 years. Somehow there is a sense that a long hard pounding will have to come for the bill to sail through those long nights - long nights which will come as a surprise to new MPs who have fought the election on almost every issue except devolution.
In practical terms, the most difficult aspect of the bill to sell may be the commitment - reaffirmed by Robertson - to keep the same number of Scottish seats. Given the pressures which are likely to come on Tony Blair from those who will still regard this as a diversion even after all those years, it is hard to see him standing out to the end gainst a reduction in the number of seats. And that would be a delight to the SNP.
You could see in George Robertson's stern defence of the plan - eloquent at times - a knowledge of the ferocity of the battle that is to come. Inevitably in such a confrontation, the combattant who has something specific to defend is always in the weaker position but Robertson, perhaps strangely,was better in defence than attack.
In his assault on 'seperatism' his mistake was to choose the question of a currency giving Salmond the opportunity to use his rehearsed props.
Facing each other at claymore's length across the floor of the old Royal High School building in Edinburgh, they clashed for the television cameras over what kind of Scottish parliament should meet there - independent and sovereign or excising powers devolved from Westminster.
The ambush for Mr Robertson came not from his SNP advesary but from a member of the audience identifying herself as a 'non-party floating voter'. She asked the two protagonists to list the options of independence, devolution, and the status quo in their personal order of preference.
Mr Salmond said that after his first choice of independence, and with doubts and reservations, he would put devolution second because the status quo was 'abysmal'.
However, to repeated shouts of 'answer!' Mr Robertson would only give his devolution as his first choice and refused pointedly to say whether independence or the status quo came next. Although he described the latter as 'unacceptable' he repeatedly refused to specify his choice between two unpalatable options.
Everyone agreed the Question had been played out. On the 12th of February, however, a new teaser - the Lorrainne Mann Question - appeared to replace it, seemingly from nowhere
Or so the befuddled Robertson thought. He was already reeling on the ropes from Salmond's punch about the Scottish currency. George had dismissed the idea that any Scots possessed credit cards and so they would be disadvantaged trying to cash Scottish notes in England. Alex flashed a Scottish fiver at him; did anyone in the audience ever experience difficulty in using that in England, he wondered.
The audience roared sympathy - had anyone present ever not experienced problems!
Then presenter Lesley Riddoch took a question from the audience - an attractive, brunette innocent abroad, she looked, certainly to Robertson. There were three options, independence, devolution and status quo, she asked. We knew the speakers' first option: what was the second?
Salmond was clear: independence first, devolution a poor second, and the status quo abysmal.
In an instant for Tam o Robertson all was dark. No pat answer, or any answer at all, was possible for him. The only thing he knew was that he dare not answer. So the standard of ad hominem debating response was the only way. Who was this 'SNP plant' anyway, he burbled.
The Edinburgh graduate hardline anti-nuclear campaigner exploded. She explained for George's benefit that she was a floating voter (actually a Labour voter at General Elections and SNP only at local elections). Following his evasive reply, however, she would be thinking again. She was the kind of floating voter new Labour had to convince, she said.
To be fair to Robertson, he just could not have answered the stumper. But his non-answer was indeed an answer. Everyone knew he could not opt for independence. So his second choice was the Unionist status quo. That question would only need to be addressed were the new Labour Party to fail to come to power at the next General Election - unthinkable, Robertson has to say. Could they possibly lose five times in a row?!? But, if they did, would George back full independence as the only way forward then for Scotland?
That was the Lorraine Mann $64,000 Question Robertson had to duck, and to keep ducking all the ways to the polls. It was the same question, in another form, that former Labour chairman and EIS general secretary John Pollock had answered in the 1970s when he told Kilbrandon that he would rather be ruled by a Tory Government from Westminster than a Nationalist Government from Edinburgh'. Pollock has since recanted that view, but the question has obviously returned to haunt George Robertson today.
It is the Lorraine Mann Question which has now to be put to the electorate with the tenacity and frequency of a Tam Dalyell.
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