Ed Miliband – I’m the change, not independence
I am in Blantyre near Motherwell, a former mining community. Ed Miliband is here to try to save the union and the referendum with a new message to traditional Labour voters.
The YouGov poll showing their support for independence up from 18 to 30 per cent over the course of three weeks has put the Yes side within touching distance of victory. Ed Miliband’s message to Labour supporters who are rejecting his advice to vote No is: David Cameron’s on his way out; you can have the “social justice” the SNP offers you without leaving the union.
It’s a measure of how well the SNP have done in stealing Labour’s ideological clothes that he’s having to do this.
The SNP has been switching the debate from “currency” to the “NHS” since the second Darling/Salmond tv debate, warning traditional Labour voters that the NHS would be privatised by Westminster.
In the words of one Better Together senior figure, Salmond was “out-Labouring” Darling in that second TV debate and managing to paint a “weirdly flat-footed” Darling into seeming to be part of the neo-liberal/privatising Westminster conspiracy.
Ed Miliband’s message in Blantyre is “help is on its way”, Cameron’s on the slide, there will be a Labour government and it wont be a wash-out like the last ones (my words not his).
Polling from the very beginning of this contest has regularly shown that support for independence in Scotland increases when voters think there’s a chance of the Tories winning power again in 2015.
The Clacton defection potentially opening up the Europe fissure in the Tory party has got a lot of Ed Miliband-sceptics in Westminster pondering for the first time that he might just get to No10.
Ed Miliband has to convince voters in Scotland of the same possibility.
Mr Miliband switched plans coming to Blantyre in the Central Belt instead of a planned visit to Aberdeen. Central Belt towns are where the critical traditional Labour vote resides in greatest numbers.
Labour figures know that the figure that most connect with these voters are first, second and third: Gordon Brown. He will return to the fray on Monday.
Other old Labour lags like John Reid are thought to have more connection with these traditional Labour voters in Scotland than Ed Miliband who’s seen as geeky and a London-type.
But Ed Miliband has to lead Labour’s battle from the front. Part of the story of Labour’s haemorrhage of support in the referendum is a problem of Ed Miliband’s credibility and connection with Scottish Labour voters and he can’t walk away from that.
Ed Miliband started his morning with a BBC Radio Scotland interview promising that “the Tories are on the way out” and “a Labour government is on the way”.
The words of Ruth Davidson the Scots Tory leader, suggesting that might well be true, help him in this argument but the truth is the change in odds on the 2015 General Election outcome owes more to Douglas Carswell’s efforts than it does to Ed Miliband’s.
Blantyre was David Livingstone’s birthplace. Some local residents clearly reckon they’d have converted the old missionary to the Yes cause.
On BBC Radio 4, the Prime Minister sounded like he was getting some retaliation in first against his internal party critics, repeating the argument that he had no choice but to allow the referendum in Scotland as there was a majority SNP administration elected in 2011 and frustrating that government’s will would have fed the calls for independence.
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