On a flying visit to Scotland in the last week of the referendum campaign, Rupert Murdoch entertained the prospect of the Scottish edition of The Sun supporting a Yes vote, just as it had supported the SNP at previous general elections.
Reports suggest the media magnate was genuinely conflicted.
Much to the anger of some of his activists, Alex Salmond had cultivated a positive relationship with Murdoch, like former Labour leader and Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had. Salmond was desperate for an endorsement, knowing that the polls were narrowing and triumph within reach at last.
Murdoch’s intervention could have a massive impact on the future of the campaign and of the country.
The inspiration for his final decision came from two unexpected directions.
During his Scottish visit he became aware, perhaps for the first time, of the identity of the SNP’s bedfellows in the Yes campaign.
The Queen at Crathie Kirk on September 14, 2014
Murdoch has a deep and intense contempt for the Greens and their anti-capitalist, anti-economic growth agenda.
Realising that a cohort of various Marxist and Trotskyist groups were also campaigning for Yes helped him to make up his mind.
But the icing on the cake, the factor that settled his mind against issuing any kind of endorsement for Yes, was even more unexpected.
During his Scottish tour, he had been chauffeured around in a vehicle on whose back seat all of the weekend newspapers had been piled.
Ever the newspaperman, Murdoch drank in the coverage, focusing on a particularly powerful column by cabinet minister Michael Gove in that day’s Daily Mail.
The colourful, emotional and eloquent column from the Aberdeen-born Scot ended: ‘My Britain has Scotland at its heart – and I cannot bear to think what it would mean for us all if that were to stop.’
The Scottish Sun would make no recommendation to its readers on how to vote. Salmond was furious.
The No camp was relieved. Rupert Murdoch, just by remaining silent, had proved once again how much influence he still wielded.
That influence was even more visible when, ten days before polling day, Murdoch mischievously tweeted about the following day’s front page splash in the Sunday Times: ‘reliable new poll on Scottish independence’, would ‘shock Britain … everything is up for grabs.’
That late-night tweet, which Murdoch knew would cause consternation across Scotland and the UK, was carefully crafted to remind people that he was still a player, still had influence, that he could still make waves.
He was right. The poll was shocking.
The Yes campaign had a two-point lead over No.
From enjoying the support of barely 30 per cent of Scots when the referendum was first agreed by the UK Government two-and-a-half years earlier, independence was now supported by 51 per cent of Scots.
If the poll were replicated on polling day itself – now a little over ten days away – then the Union that had held the United Kingdom together for more than 300 years would be dissolved.
Yet the YouGov poll, though it created a sensation across the country and turned the blood of pro-UK activists and campaigners to ice, wasn’t unexpected.
The trend, from the very start of the campaign, had been only in one direction. The longer the campaign went on, the closer the two rival camps became in terms of support.
Hopes that the nationalists could be beaten by a more comfortable margin – talk in the House of Commons tearoom was that the Yes camp could be held to as low as 35 per cent – evaporated.
Now the panicking Better Together campaign would settle for a simple majority, however large or small.
The divisive referendum campaign set Scots against one another
As if confirming the veracity of the warnings that had been issued by the No campaign for months, the poll triggered a fall in the value of the pound to its lowest level in ten months, and billions were wiped off the value of Scottish-based businesses including RBS, Lloyds Banking Group and Standard Life.
While the poll sparked panic among the pro-UK campaign and was responsible for some radical measures by a united front of UK political leaders in order to persuade Scots to stick with the Union, there were two people who remained icy calm.
One was Alistair Darling, the chair and leader of the Better Together campaign, who had been chosen specifically because of his calm demeanour and unflappable personality.
The man who kept his cool at the height of the 2008 banking crisis was exactly the right person to be in charge of the No campaign when it was overtaken in the polls.
The other person was the Queen.
The late monarch was known to have been sceptical about the wisdom of a referendum on Scottish independence.
She had no wish, after all, to be the last ever head of state of the United Kingdom, whatever promises the SNP government had made about her status in its White Paper on independence.
Rumours swirled that she had taken David Cameron, her Prime Minister, to task over the No campaign’s apparent failures during his stay at Balmoral on the very weekend that the YouGov poll was published.
While Queen Elizabeth maintained the highest standards of political neutrality publicly, no one doubted which side she fervently hoped would win the referendum on September 18.
Speculation on this point turned to certainty when, following her attendance at the Sunday service at Crathie Kirk, near Balmoral, she was overheard telling well- wishers that she hoped ‘everyone would think very carefully about the referendum’.
This was as close to declaring a public opinion as Her Majesty had ever come.
The story, picked up by journalist Jim Lawson, was naturally splashed over the front pages the next day.
Which was apparently the Queen’s deliberate intention.
Veteran journalist and lifelong supporter of the Union, Alan Cochrane, records in his referendum diary that the whole event had been planned by the Queen’s staff.
Unusually, the police had been instructed to allow the waiting Press to gather far closer to the Queen than was traditionally permitted. ‘There is absolutely no doubt that she did it deliberately,’ wrote Cochrane, ‘and knew exactly what the effect would be – it was the splash everywhere. Fantastic.’
Shortly after the referendum, Cameron did nothing to endear himself further to his monarch when he was caught on camera boasting that, on phoning the palace to inform her of the result, the Queen had ‘purred’ down the line at him in delight at the news.
But the calm and deliberate response by the Queen was not replicated by the politicians in whom she had entrusted the future of her kingdom.
They much preferred the headless chicken strategy when it came to saving the Union.
It had long been anticipated that in the event of a No victory, Holyrood could expect a tranche of new powers to be devolved – on top of the original responsibilities contained in the Scotland Act of 1998 and the subsequent powers transferred in 2012 following the Calman Commission report.
Urged on by Murray Foote, the editor of the Daily Record and future chief executive of the SNP, the three main UK party leaders – David Cameron, the Labour leader Ed Miliband and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – were persuaded to add their names to what became known as The Vow.
This was a front page declaration committing the UK Government not only to maintaining the Barnett Formula that guarantees Scotland’s generous share of national expenditure, but ‘extensive new powers for the parliament’ to be delivered according to a timetable previously set out by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, starting the very day after the referendum.
All of this was contingent, of course, on Scots voting No.
Scottish Labour MPs were not consulted on this generous new plan to devolve even more powers beyond what was originally promised during the 1997 referendum on devolution.
At a meeting of the Scottish parliamentary Labour Party after the referendum, at which the new powers for Holyrood were discussed, one backbencher asked the leadership if they could pinpoint ‘a single occasion where new powers for Scotland had resulted in a strengthening of the Union?’ Answer came there none.
Whether The Vow made a difference to Scots’ voting intention remains a matter of conjecture and opinion.
One official from Better Together later claimed that a senior and respected pollster had predicted at the very start of the campaign that No would win by exactly ten percentage points; the publication of The Vow had done nothing to alter his opinion or the result.
Campaigners often recall the impact of the Sunday Times/YouGov poll and the fear that spread through the No campaign as a result.
But fewer recall the ICM poll for the Daily Telegraph on September 13 – five days before polling day – which had given the Yes campaign a staggering eight-point lead.
But this was countered by an internal poll for the No campaign, carried out by Survation at the same time, that gave No the exact same size of lead.
It all added to the sense that despite – perhaps because of – wall-to-wall media coverage and constant street-level campaigning by the two camps, no one really knew what the outcome was going to be.
At a rally held at the statue of Donald Dewar in Glasgow’s Buchanan Street on Thursday, September 11, with exactly a week of campaigning to go, Scottish Labour MPs and MSPs gathered for a show of strength in the city’s busiest shopping areas.
But the Yes campaigners were never going to allow a No event to pass off peacefully.
Activists holding Yes posters inserted themselves into the ranks of parliamentarians to spoil the media photographs and videos, while others stood nearby shouting abuse and slogans, seeking to drown out the speeches of Labour leader Ed Miliband and Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont.
How music icon Bowie became a star man for No campaigners
Ms Moss reads message
There’s nothing like a bit of showbiz razzle-dazzle to liven up a political campaign.
So nationalists were mighty pleased when Hollywood A-listers Brian Cox and Alan Cumming shared the stage with Alex Salmond at the launch of the Yes campaign on May 25, 2021.
However, as neither was a Scottish resident they couldn’t vote in the referendum. Cumming bought an £82,000 flat in Edinburgh in 2013 to ensure he could cast a ballot – but his showbiz schedule meant he was unable to live here for six months of the year, as required by election officials.
The involvement of No-supporting celebrities wasn’t so welcome among the so-called Cybernats. Music icon David Bowie drew the ire of separatists when he dared voice an opinion.
While he wasn’t at the Brit Awards in February 2014 to accept an award for Best British Male Solo Artist, he sent supermodel Kate Moss on his behalf. She read out a message written by Bowie, which finished with the line: ‘Scotland, please stay with us.’
The intervention by the king of glam rock was welcomed by the No campaign. But not by Yes activists, one of whom said he had deleted every Bowie track from his music collection. Another wrote: ‘What gives [Bowie] the right to tell Scotland what to do when he doesn’t even pay taxes over here?’ Presumably the same person was happy not to level the question at Cox or Cumming.
Bowie was one of many celebrities to take a side as the independence campaign drew to a close. The Proclaimers, Annie Lennox and Billy Bragg all publicly supported a Yes vote. On the No side, Bowie was joined by Doctor Who star John Barrowman, Blackadder’s Tony Robinson, comedian Eddie Izzard and Ross Kemp of EastEnders fame.
The jury is out as to the impact of these celebrity endorsements, but they certainly helped motivate activists on both sides.
While the ensuing chaos was seen by some as democracy in practice, it was noted that No campaigners would never have tried to disrupt a Yes event in a similar fashion.
One attending MP reported that it felt like the ending of the film Zulu, when embattled British soldiers prepared to be overwhelmed by the African tribal hordes.
But on this occasion, relief came not from the voluntary retreat of the enemy, but from the arrival in Buchanan Street of more than 100 Labour MPs from England and Wales who had travelled up to Glasgow by train and were there to campaign alongside their Scottish comrades.
The MP said: ‘It was a wonderful sight to see all those friends and colleagues coming to help – a reminder that they hadn’t forgotten us and that we were all fighting for the same country.’
Alex Salmond’s determination to hold his referendum in 2014 was based on his calculation that the longer the campaign went on, the better chance he had of winning it.
But the timing of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow that year will surely have played a part in his thinking.
What better boost could the Yes campaign have than to set out for an international audience a vision of a dynamic, inclusive, optimistic Scotland? In the run-up to the Olympic Games in 2012, SNP politicians had barely mentioned them, resentful that Britain was centre stage as host to the greatest sporting event in the world.
Now, in 2014, it was Scotland’s turn and the SNP were determined to make the most of it.
Scottish athletes played their part, of course, less concerned with the political implications of the games than with their personal focus on winning their events – which they did, in greater numbers than at any previous games. It really was a genuine celebration of sport and international collaboration.
Surely it would pay off in terms of support for Yes?
It remains unclear precisely what effect the Commonwealth Games had on the final result in September 2014, although there is a case for concluding that the decision by a majority of Glaswegians to support independence was perhaps partly influenced by the city’s successful hosting duties.
But no international event happening in Scotland in 2014 could pass off without controversy. And this time it centred on the Red Arrows’ iconic flyby, accompanied by the traditional red, white and blue smoke trails.
That the colours of the Union flag were replicated in the skies over Glasgow was proof to many nationalists, if proof were needed, that the UK ‘deep state’ would do anything to solidify support for the UK.
The last time that Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons had been cancelled was when then Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, had been bereaved by the death of his young son, Ivan.
Now, on September 10, 2014, the extraordinary decision was taken – with the agreement of the three main party leaders – to cancel the session once again to allow the leaders to head to Scotland to campaign for the Union.
‘There is a lot that divides us – but there’s one thing on which we agree passionately: the United Kingdom is better together,’ read a joint statement.
For many, it was sign of seriousness, not only of the political situation but of the intent of politicians who might normally be expected to prioritise their own partisan advantage.
Voters are known to approve of such acts of co-operation and no doubt the No campaign hoped to benefit from this magnanimous and unprecedented gesture.
Alex Salmond was less impressed. ‘The No campaign is in complete and utter disarray, and they are making this farce up as they go along,’ he said.
Nevertheless, it represented some welcome publicity and positive press coverage for the UK parties and for the pro-Union campaign.
While events led by David Cameron were, in general, limited to speeches to audiences of financial institutions and investors, Ed Miliband was keen to display his campaigning and communication skills.
He felt a keen responsibility to play a key role in defending the country that he hoped he would be leading following the next year’s general election.
But his determination to speak to ordinary voters would be foiled once again by aggressive Yes supporters, who would tolerate no contact between the No campaign and ordinary Scots so long as they were there to prevent it.
Ugly scenes developed when Miliband tried to campaign at the St James shopping centre in Edinburgh.
By the last week of the campaign, aggressive behaviour from the Yes campaign (or at least that campaign’s more aggressive supporters) was simply an expected hazard that had to be accounted for when events were being planned.
They succeeded and Miliband was forced to beat a humiliating retreat.