Better Together (campaign)

Not to be confused with NHS Scotland's Better Together (programme).

Better Together 2012 Limited

Formation	1 June 2012
Type	Company limited by guarantee
Registration no.	SC425421
Focus	Scottish independence referendum, 2014
Headquarters	Edinburgh Quay, 133 Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, EH3 9AG
Key people	Blair McDougall, Campaign Director Directors: Alistair Darling MP, (Chairman), David McLetchie MSP, Richard Baker MSP, Craig Harrow, Jackie Baillie MSP, Phil Anderton
Website	bettertogether.net

Better Together is the organisation representing the parties, organisations and individuals campaigning for a No vote in the 2014 referendum on Scottish Independence. It was established in 2012 with support of the three main pro-union political parties in Scotland: Scottish Labour, the Scottish Conservative Party and the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

History

Alistair Darling MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Gordon Brown, officially launched the campaign on 25 June 2012 at the Craiglockhart Campus of Edinburgh Napier University. Darling is a Director and Chairman of the campaign alongside: Conservative MSP David McLetchie; Craig Harrow, convener of the Scottish Liberal Democrats; and Labour MSPs Richard Baker and Jackie Baillie. The campaign was officially registered as Better Together 2012 Limited and its registered office is located in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh.

Better Together's Campaign Director is Labour activist Blair McDougall, who was a special adviser to Ian McCartney (2004-2007) and James Purnell (2007-2008) during the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He was national director of the Labour Party's Movement for Change organisation from 2011 until he joined Better Together.

Although the UK Independence Party (UKIP) also favours Scotland remaining within the United Kingdom, Better Together has refused to work with them on the grounds that "they are not a Scottish party". UKIP in return accused Better Together of being "petty and small minded".

In May 2013, Scottish Labour launched its own campaign called United with Labour. Its co-ordinator, Labour MP Anas Sarwar, stated that the Labour movement had a different vision of Scotland's future from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, but that they would continue to work with Better Together.

Alistair Darling stated in May 2013 that his side needs to "win well" in order to prevent another independence referendum within just a few years, to head off calls for another poll, the so-called "neverendum". He contrasted his campaign's position with that Yes Scotland, saying they had to win only "by one vote" to achieve their ultimate aim. Although Darling did not say what percentage of the vote "win well" would entail, his colleagues had earlier said that the Yes vote would need to be pushed under 40% in order to answer the independence question for "a generation".

On 6 June 2013, the BBC reported that SNP's deputy First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon MSP argued that a post-independence bilateral relationship should be ″closest of allies and the best of neighbours", to which the Better Together campaign responded ″that the co-operation being described already existed as the UK″.

On 23 June 2013, the Sunday Herald reported that "privately, some inside Better Together" refer to the campaign by the name "Project Fear", while agreed that this 'tactic' of pointing out a policy-void in the opposite campaign has worked, but ′don't expect any change′ of that.

Subsections

On 8 June 2013, Better Together launched its "Forces Together" campaign, consisting of active and veteran service personnel as well as their family members, with a goal of emphasising the importance of the British Army.

On 21 June, Alistair Darling launched the "Rural Better Together" campaign at the Royal Highland Show. Rural Better Together will be chaired by Liberal Democrat MEP George Lyon who said farmers had given the group a "great response".

Donations

The pro-union campaign disclosed its donor list on the night of 6 April 2013 The campaign to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom has received donations of more than £1.1m since launching last June, and figures released by the Better Together organisation showed some 9,500 people had given it money, notably from businessmen worried about the economics of independence.

The Herald commented that ″The preponderance of business people is a blow to Alex Salmond, who has made a stronger economy a cornerstone of the SNP's case for independence″.

Among the big donors was Douglas Flint CBE, the Glasgow-born chairman of global super-bank HSBC. The largest single donation was one of £500,000 (almost ″half the total″), which came from Ian Taylor, an international oil trader with a major stake in the Harris Tweed industry, after a meeting on Lewis with Alistair Darling, the Better Together chairman and former Labour Chancellor. Taylor, chief executive of Vitol Plc, has given the Conservatives £550,000 since 2006.

Other donors of more than £7,500 included author CJ Sansom, who gave £161,000, and engineering entrepreneur Alan Savage, who handed over £100,000.

Dispute

In April 2013, the campaign revealed that it had received £1.1m in donations since its launch the preceding June. The largest donors included: Douglas Flint CBE, the chairman of HSBC; and Ian Taylor, chief executive of Vitol, alongside with £161,000 from Edinburgh-born crime writer CJ Sansom, who described the Scottish National Party as "dangerous" in a note appended to his recent novel Dominion. All of the three enlisted donations drew criticism from Yes Scotland, for accepting them from benefactors 'outside Scotland'.

Taylor's involvement was also criticised by the pro-independence organisation National Collective, who pointed to "serious incidents [...] linked to Ian Taylor's business background".

The Herald also pointed to Ian Taylor's links to "dubious deals in Serbia, Iraq, Iran and Libya" and UK tax avoidance. Angus Robertson of the Scottish National Party added: "This information is extremely serious and raises questions the No campaign must answer. Material in the public domain states that during his tenure as chief executive Mr Taylor's company paid $1m to Serbian war criminal Arkan, who was indicted at the Hague for crimes against humanity... Also during Mr Taylor's tenure it is reported Vitol paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in return for oil supply contracts, and was involved in a tax avoidance scheme in the UK for over a decade. His donations to the Tories were questioned and criticised by Labour's Douglas Alexander in relation to a conflict of interest about oil contracts in Libya, so the No campaign must have been aware of these matters."

Mr Taylor responded by threatening the Herald, National Collective, and another pro-independence website, Wings Over Scotland, with legal action for defamation. National Collective closed its site down for several days before replacing the offending article with a slightly edited version including responses from Vitol. On 16 April, the Herald published a response from Vitol's PR firm to the allegations as an appendix to its original article. Wings Over Scotland simply ignored the initial threat, then challenged a second letter without amending its piece.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie also defended the use of Mr Taylor's money, saying: "If it's good enough for Harris tweed, it should be good enough for Better Together."

Accusations of running a negative campaign

The counterpart Yes Scotland campaign has on occasions accused "Better Together" of "scaremongering" rather than engaging in constructive and reasoned debate.

In December 2012, anti-independence businessman Robert Durward was reported in the Sunday Times warning "Better Together" campaign chairman Alistair Darling that "constantly lining up people to denigrate Scotland's options and capabilities could easily backfire and there are already signs of this".

On 18 January 2013, pro-Union journalist Joyce McMillan wrote in the Scotsman: "The truth is that the tone of the No camp’s response to the independence debate has – in too many cases – been so reactionary, so negative, and so fundamentally disrespectful of the Scottish Parliament as an institution, that I now find it hard to think of voting with them, no matter what my views on the constitution. And this, for me, is a new experience in politics – to enter a debate with a strongish view on one side of the argument, and to find myself so repelled by the tone and attitudes of those who should be my allies that I am gradually forced into the other camp"

On 17 February 2013, an editorial column in the Sunday Mail said "The No campaign needs to start explaining why the Union can make Scotland better not why independence will be a terrible thing as Scots, mired in a swamp of endless negotiations, wander between our mud huts borrowing cups of woad. If, as their campaign claims, we will be better together, they need to start telling us why."

On 7 March 2013, an editorial column in the Scottish Sun, which at the time in April 2013 was undecided on independence said "Here's a radical idea for the Better Together campaign. Just once, just for a change, let's hear something positive about why Scotland would be better staying part of the United Kingdom. Because frankly, the scare stories are wearing a bit thin."

In March 2013, a column in the Observer by Scottish Daily Mail executive editor Kevin McKenna, a self-proclaimed Unionist, said: "In one respect, 18 months is a very long time for a political campaign. For surely there is a limit on how long otherwise proud Scots, night after night, can stomach [Better Together's] own narrative: that Scotland is too wee to go it alone; that we can't make our economy work; that we must have a babysitter sometimes; that at other times we must be back before midnight. Months of telling people that, unlike Ireland, Denmark and Luxembourg, Scotland is simply not strong enough may exact a toll on Better Together volunteers well before it takes a toll on the voters."

In April 2013, the former Labour First Minister, Henry McLeish ,a current advocate of a No vote in the referendum wrote in an article for Holyrood magazine: "The long campaign to 2014 is negative, acrimonious, partisan and uninspiring. Fear is being used to such an extent that it insults our intelligence. The gun-to-the-head politics is clumsy and potentially counter-productive [...] The Better Together campaign hasn't worked out a future for Scotland within the UK. Being so relentlessly negative is not a strategy." In June 2013, McLeish also appeared in the STV documentary series Road to Referendum, and said: "I think Alex Salmond is offering something in terms of independence, whether you like it or not. The Unionists are not offering, in my view, anything. And you can't go into an independence poll in 2014 saying, you know, 'We've been together since 1707, let's be together for the next 300 years'. For a lot of young Scots in particular, that's not an attractive proposition."

On 28 April 2013, an editorial column in the Sunday Herald read: "The Better Together campaign has many faults. It is tedious, piecemeal, relentlessly negative, and a factory for an endless supply of scare stores."

See also

• Yes Scotland
• United with Labour
• Unionism in Scotland
• Scottish Labour Party
• Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
• Scottish Liberal Democrat Party

External links

• Official website