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ScotRef!

If they can get the currency question right I think they'll win this. The "uncertainty" case for remaining in the UK is utterly shot to bits (as many of us said it would be, to be fair.) If the Yes campaign can find a winning formula on currency it's hard to see a weak point in their argument.

 

And - hear me out here - I think savvy Yes operatives need to take a leaf from Donald Trump's book. I don't mean his policies or anything, but rather how he deals with a hostile, bought-and-paid-for media. If you can't make the media work for you, bypass it altogether. If you can have them dancing to your tune, it's free publicity. Then again the UK media is a good deal more (openly) partisan than the US media so maybe it's not an exact analogy. But the key point is that playing nice isn't really an option. The media will, as in the last referendum, act in bad faith, and it should be treated in kind. If it's not working for you it's working against you.

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And a word of advice for any Yes volunteers:

 

1) One minute on the doorsteps is worth five hours online.

2) On the doorsteps be cheerful, open, and positive.

3) Online, always be trolling.

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The weak point in the argument is the same as last time - addressing the economic question. The Yes campaign ignored this point at the referendum and I think this resulted in Yes wannabees taking cold feet at the polling stations. I was very much a Yes last time out but will wait to see how much of a car crash Brexit is before deciding this time.

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The weak point in the argument is the same as last time - addressing the economic question. The Yes campaign ignored this point at the referendum and I think this resulted in Yes wannabees taking cold feet at the polling stations. I was very much a Yes last time out but will wait to see how much of a car crash Brexit is before deciding this time.

 

The No camp had a huge advantage in that question because they could just bleat 'uncertainty!' last time. While many of us knew that the future was just as uncertain remaining in the Union, we didn't put that across well enough. Now the two sides have to start on an even keel because Brexit is an even bigger source of uncertainty.

 

But currency is the big one IMO, bigger than the (macro) economic question which is really unanswerable.

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I'll be voting Yes, again, obviously but I'm weary that the campaign has to be more detailed. The economic situation has to be clearly outlined and voting Yes has to be presented as a viable alternative to Brexit. Long road ahead, but if the campaign is positive and attempts to actually engage and sway No voters rather than ignore them, I'm confident Yes could win reasonably comfortably.

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Curious as to what the rules will be this time. Will 16 year olds be able to vote? Will people who live outside Scotland be able to vote?

 

Yes to 16+ but I jolly well hope no johnny foreigner has a vote - you will end up with uncouth types from Belgium thinking they have a voice.

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I'll be voting Yes, again, obviously but I'm weary that the campaign has to be more detailed. The economic situation has to be clearly outlined and voting Yes has to be presented as a viable alternative to Brexit. Long road ahead, but if the campaign is positive and attempts to actually engage and sway No voters rather than ignore them, I'm confident Yes could win reasonably comfortably.

 

You can have the most well-thought-out, technocratic piece of brilliance in the world and it will still lose against a message that resonates. Rhetoric is what wins elections. People think they soberly weigh up the various pros and cons and then make a reasoned decision but the number of people who actually do this is infinitesimally small. Almost everyone who is interested already has their mind made up, whether they know it or not. We live in a world of mass communications, and a culture that both visually and aurally assaults us from all sides 24/7, and our very natural, very understandable response is to try to shelter ourselves from that which causes cognitive dissonance while seeking out that which confirms our pre-existing worldview.

 

As such a winning campaign will do two things:

 

1) Maintain, rally, and encourage its supporter base. The ride-or-die voters are the ones who keep you relevant during a long campaign.

2) Provide enough cover to floating voters that they can vote Yes without fear of cognitive dissonance. Cover is very different from justification. Again, the number of people who are actually going to be convinced one way or another by a white paper on macroeconomics is, generously, a few thousand. Whereas you can get hundreds of thousands if you tell people something just close enough to what they need to hear.

 

It's point two that means we can't dodge the issues entirely - they need to have that level of cover, just enough that they can think they're making an enlightened, rational choice.

 

If the above sounds cynical, it's because it is, but I think deep down you'll agree with me, because... well, you're voting Yes despite not knowing the economic case. So if it's not important to you, why do you think it's important to everyone else?

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Now, that said, there is one confounding factor. In most elections - and even in Brexit - there are enough sit-outs from previous elections that courting the disenfranchised who didn't even show up last time is a great strategy. (C.F. the election of God-Emperor Donald Trump.) Unfortunately that's only a partial option this time around because turnout was so excellent for the 2014 referendum. You'd need something like 75% of those who didn't vote last time to show up and for every one of them to vote Yes. So in this sense, there does need to be some measure of outreach for the nawbags. You can't just bypass them. (This is a very good way to win Parliamentary elections, though.) But again, you can come up with the greatest white paper ever written and it doesn't matter - people will say "it's all speculation" and that's all your hard work gone.

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I'm far from convinced that I've heard anything from the SNP on addressing the economic question since the last ref. Pontificating about membership of an increasingly unstable EU is not the basis for a successful campaign.

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Well, I can understand why. Trump's victory was the greatest political upset in modern history. He's probably the best electoral politician (as opposed to governing politician) ever to live. As my name suggests, his victory is my specialist subject.

 

But I can't advocate just saying "do what Trump did." Trump works off an OODA loop and what works in one situation won't automatically work in another. As such there is no one playbook with a winning, Trumpian strategy.

 

For this reason there is only a small number of his tactics that, in my view, apply. They can't be adopted wholesale. Scots and Americans are different people. Populism outright doesn't work on Scots. (Although interestingly, Scots-Irish and Scottish Americans went for Trump at rates far above the average.)

 

With all that said, and I hope this is sufficient warning for anyone looking to join the meme war, the main ones to adopt are these:

 

1) Either control the media narrative or bypass it. Don't rely on a he-said, she-said journalist at an establishment or mainstream source to treat you fairly. They won't. The smart set, what are in American parlance "the front row kids", are not here to give you a fair hearing, much less help you. Anyone who didn't learn this from 2014 should have learned it from Brexit - the range of acceptable expression in the mainstream media in the UK is jaw-droppingly narrow, and a fair case for independence is (with VERY few exceptions) completely off the table.

 

As a lay person discussing the election in the pub, your role in this point is to ridicule at every opportunity the cornfed interns and midwits who comprise the bulk of the media. The nightmare for every journalist is that they're not taken seriously. Troll them relentlessly and remorselessly. Remind them constantly that, if they're on TV, their viewership is either in a dentist's waiting room or an old folks' home, both with the sound off. Remind them that if they work for a newspaper they'll be begging under a flyover in two years' time. And if they're on Buzzfeed or whatever, find something mildly problematic that a colleague of theirs wrote and spam them with it until they either disavow or double down. Basically, get into their heads, because journalists can't help but make the story about them (they are very serious people who are ITK in very serious situations, remember), and this is their core weakness. And as we learned from Clinton, if the media is in a symbiotic relationship with the campaign, and you get in the media's heads, you've also got into the campaign's heads. Then you get an array of brilliant own goals like Clinton talking to the American people about a cartoon frog (this actually happened), the 'fake news' own goal, etc. There is a 'fake news' analog waiting to happen in the UK, and I intend to be part of the meme army who bullies it out of some chinless Tristan at the Scotsman.

 

2) DON'T get the normals caught in the crossfire when you do this. Trump got away with a lot because he had no 'Deplorables' moment, nor a 47% moment. Instead, bait the opposition into doing the same. Eventually someone in the No campaign is going to lose their temper and lash out - it's the layperson's job to make this a deplorable moment and to feign outrage for weeks.

 

3) emphasize the personal. Social Media is useful for trolling only. If you're not baiting journalists or campaign members you're wasting your time. Instead if you want to evangelize, do it WITH A SMILE, in person, and with conviction but not gravity. People react badly to being told how to feel and what to believe. They react well to friendly, light-hearted discussions with a non-threatening interlocutor *who is sure of what he is saying.*

 

More later. I have some Twitter accounts to register.

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Dear Yes campaign, 

Please stay away from the Trident issue, with your gash "Bairns not Bombs" pish. It never won you any votes, just lost you quite a few! 

Run Silent, Run Deep...

 

"Men who go to sea in Submarines are nothing but pirates in His Majesties uniform" Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe

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Dear Yes campaign, 

Please stay away from the Trident issue, with your gash "Bairns not Bombs" pish. It never won you any votes, just lost you quite a few! 

 

The promise to begin the process of decommissioning Trident was one of the main reasons I voted/will vote Yes. 

26/4/18


A Decade of Wakeism.

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