THE founder of a pro-independence think tank has said the Yes movement didn’t win in 2014 because “we lack confidence in ourselves”.
Robin McAlpine, founder of CommonWeal, was speaking at the Scottish Currency Group Conference in Dunfermline on Saturday when he said people did not have “confidence” in the plans proposed by the Yes movement, largely because Yessers were not convinced of them themselves.
“It’s not that people don’t have confidence in themselves, it’s that people don’t have confidence in us,” McAlpine told the Sunday National, referring to the independence movement.
McAlpine (below), a National contributor, previously coined the “four pillars of independence”, which the electorate would need to be convinced the Yes movement had solutions for before they could vote in favour of independence. These include currency, pensions, the EU and the Border.
“People asked us about currency during the referendum and we just blinked,” McAlpine said.
He told the Sunday National that people were unlikely to follow unless a “credible and competent” answer to their questions was in place.
“If you say you’re going to take a wonderful journey in a boat, and people don’t believe that boat is seaworthy, then they won’t get on,” he said.
“I’m not going to get on a space rocket if it’s got an 80% chance of blowing up.”
What’s the solution?
McAlpine said in order to convince people of Yes, we need to “come up with actual answers” to the questions people have on independence.
“We can do this by engaging with an entire planet full of intellectuals and thinkers, bankers, border control experts,” he added.
“They are sitting, everything is there. But we’re not talking to them.”
“It’s not about feeding people lots and lots of detailed information, it’s about persuading them that we’ve thought about that detail.
“If we go on live television and answer questions [about independence] and we don’t answer them competently, comprehensively and persuasively, it’s going to sound unconvincing, and every time you go on TV you will get that question.
“But if you answer it quickly, precisely, clearly, simply and technically, then they won’t ask it again.
“It’s not about pinning poor suckers on the wall and telling them all about crawl exchange rate management, it’s about knowing that if anyone asks us, then we’ve got the answer.”
McAlpine added that when the movement seems confident in themselves and their answers, third party experts are then more likely to feel the same.
‘The only people stopping us are us’
McAlpine urged the independence movement to “stop worrying” about the role the media and social media plays in distributing anti-independence rhetoric.
“Let them be,” he urged.
“We have the numbers, when we are active, to go out and deliver that message ourselves. We just need to engage.”
“The people who are stopping us are us,” McAlpine continued.
“If we get out of our own way, I really believe we can be independent in five years.”
