Referendum talk is cheap. Campaigning is the hard part

In England a thousand calculations are made about a referendum on Europe that might never take place. Some Conservative MPs talk of little else. Senior Labour figures agonise over whether to also offer a referendum of their own. They contemplate making such a pledge next month, before their party conference. In stark contrast, in Scotland, a contest is under way for a referendum that definitely will take place.

There is no more vivid example of the difference between the two countries than the focus on these entirely separate votes. Speak to anyone interested in politics in Scotland and there is virtually no reference at all to the dangerous game of poker being played in England over a European referendum. They are engaged in a more immediate historic battle, one that gets significantly less attention south of the border.

There is, though, a common link between those in England frothing with anticipation over a poll on Europe and the campaigners in Scotland seeking to win next year’s referendum. In the nerve-shredding frenzy about whether to call them at all, when they should be held, what the question should be, and who should be allowed to vote, a key issue is weirdly underplayed: how to win them.

For all the noise in the United Kingdom about the possibility of referendums, we rarely hold them. When they are staged, no one knows quite what to do. The campaigns on both sides of the AV (alternative vote) referendum were dire. The antis won easily, but only because their opponents were so comically poor.

Surely, Nick Clegg would have given considerable thought about how to win such a campaign? After all this was the most significant moment of his career.

He had certainly devoted much time to ensuring there would be a referendum, the timing, the question. The campaign was an afterthought, and was incoherent when it had any energy at all. Ed Miliband, who was a half-hearted supporter of electoral change, did not appear with Clegg. Neither managed to generate any excitement over an issue that would have changed British politics for ever.

In Scotland there is already a degree of wary introspection on both sides. The Better Together campaign is led by the former chancellor, Alistair Darling, calmly authoritative and respected but not one of the more dynamic or experienced political strategists. At one time, Gordon Brown had the popularity, guile and hunger to be the most effective campaigner in Scotland. For the first elections to the Scottish parliament in 1998 he virtually left the Treasury for a few months to successfully revive Labour’s flagging campaign.

Now he intervenes occasionally, but not as part of Darling’s organisation. Brown spoke instead at the launch of United With Labour. This separate movement emerged when some senior party figures in Scotland expressed concern about campaigning with other groups, especially the Conservatives.

A union leader spoke for a significant section of the party at Labour’s conference in Scotland: “While I appreciate the referendum ... has to have a formal yes and no campaign, most of us in the Labour movement have a huge difficulty with any campaign that includes the Tories.” Senior Liberal Democrats in Scotland worry about Labour’s internal tensions.

Internal differences

They worry with good cause. There is a small echo of the disastrous AV campaign, when Labour’s internal differences and those tensions between Miliband and Clegg led to a one-sided outcome.

Referendum campaigns in the UK strike oddly discordant notes. We have a party-based system, after all. Referendums are advocated or offered only because leaders calculate they will benefit their parties, or at least will keep them united.

But once they are called, elements from the Conservatives and Labour, Labour and the Lib Dems, are all expected to work with one another. Quite often they find it almost impossible to do so, tribal attachment overriding an ambiguous sense of common cause.

What is more surprising is the degree to which the SNP has struggled to adapt to the demands of a referendum campaign. Its leading figures spent much energy on timing, the question on the ballot paper and securing a reduction in voting age to 16. Now that the campaign is under way, concerns are being raised about how lack lustre it is and how unprepared advocates of independence are when asked detailed questions about the implications for the economy, public services, the BBC and the rest.

The surprise is greater because the SNP has some very smart strategists behind the scenes, and of course in Alex Salmond they have the leader who brilliantly turned Labour’s attempt to destroy him through devolution into an opportunity to seize power.

Partisan figure

But in the context of a referendum campaign, even the deployment of Salmond becomes more complex. Evidently he is a partisan figure. How can the leader of a party be anything other than partisan, and recognised as such? As a result, at least so far, the independence campaign is not sure how much prominence to give him or the degree to which he is an unqualified asset as they seek the widest possible appeal.

Again, there are small echoes of the electoral reform referendum. The reformers did not know how to use Clegg, the biggest advocate of voting change and then at the height of his unpopularity. Salmond is far more popular than Clegg was then or is now, but when leaders are not entirely clear how to make their pitch there is usually trouble ahead.

Pollsters in Edinburgh tell me all their data points overwhelmingly to a defeat for those seeking independence. One says that soon the only question will be the margin of victory for the “no” camp.

But referendums are strangers in the UK, deployed for party advantage, forcing parties to work together, each calculating where the outcome will leave them. Otherwise brilliant strategists struggle to seize on themes that can give them headway, and fall quite easily into traps. Anything can happen in such circumstances.

I am not a fan of referendums. Leaders do not offer them out of a sudden desire to empower voters. They do so to get their parties out of a hole. What neat symmetry that on those occasions when one actually looms into view, they have no clue how to fight an effective campaign.

Steve Richards is performing his one-man show Rock’n’Roll Politics 2 at the Edinburgh festival until 25 August

— Guardian News & Media Limited