It all seemed so positive at the time.

In the run-up to the referendum, many, many thousands of people took the time to educate themselves, and each other, about how we in Scotland are governed. Information came to light about taxation flows, media coverage, oil revenues, voting records, expenses payments. Everywhere, people were interested in politics.

I always wanted that to happen, so the last few tumultuous months before the vote were quite dizzying to live through.

I voted Yes. I was sure it was the right thing to do.

It was an article of faith on the Yes side that lots of citizens had journeyed from No to Yes, but no one ever headed in the opposite direction.

Well, more than two months after September 18th, I look around me at what the Yes movement has become. And I think I want out.

It all seemed so positive at the time. But last week the Yes movement entered its imperial phase, signalled in particular by the massive SNP celebration event at the Hydro in Glasgow. And the jubilant tone of the thousands of Yes voters glorying in that event and others finally tipped me over the edge.

It’s that tone that makes me suspect the movement was built on a fundamentally flawed conception of power all along. It’s that tone that makes me question the credibility of the leaders who have emerged from the Yes movement, and the cheerleaders who hero-worship them. And it’s that tone that makes me doubt the progressive credentials of the entire enterprise.

It all seemed so positive at the time. But I’m increasingly concerned that the Scottish public sphere faces a serious threat from authoritarian, sanctimonious Yes fundamentalists.

And that’s the very opposite of what I thought I was voting for.

Allow me to explain.

I used to think that “cybernats” didn’t exist outside the heads of Labour activists. Maybe they didn’t. But, dearie me, there are plenty of them around these days.

(Cybernats, to the uninitiated, are supporters of Scottish independence and, usually, the SNP, who spend their time online, harassing people who disagree with their worldview.)

Indeed, until recently I’d only ever really been concerned about cyber-Labs: angry Labour supporters who use Twitter to lambast political opponents, real and imagined.

There are still plenty of them, too, although oddly they seem relatively cowed at the moment.

What follows draws at times from my admittedly subjective impressions of the tenor of social media over the last couple of months. No doubt my experience is far from the whole story, but as a non-aligned Yes voter with no party axe to grind I hope my reflections are free of especially egregious bias.

I want to reflect on four events from the past week and then draw some conclusions from them. I’ll begin by discussing the SNP event at the Hydro, before considering the Radical Independence conference that took place on the same day next door. I’ll look thirdly at the launch of the National newspaper, before reflecting on the fall-out from Gordon Brown’s (rumoured) decision to stand down as an MP at the next election.

Scottish Peronism

Since the referendum, the SNP has claimed a remarkable spike in membership, now approaching a four-fold increase towards the 100,000 mark. Not unreasonably, the party decided to arrange a roadshow of public events around the country at which the leader-elect, Nicola Sturgeon, could address the party faithful. When the party swelled in numbers, the demand for tickets for these events was such that the party was able to upsize to much bigger venues.

That was the SNP’s first real clanger in ages. The leadership should have resisted the temptation to sell out the Hydro. Always leave them wanting more, as Elvis used to advise. And, more importantly, don’t give your opponents the opportunity to accuse you of hosting a mass nationalist rally.

The photographs from the event at the Hydro are quite bizarre. My favourite is reproduced below:

Stewart Hosie, there, headlining Woodstock.

Now, clearly the SNP are quite a moderate, sober party, and they have deservedly been elected in Scotland on the basis of their technocratic competence. But events like these, and images like the one above, imperil all of that.

In recent times the SNP has positioned itself as the natural party of government in Scotland. No harm in that – maybe they are. But, more worryingly, they’ve started to present themselves as the only legitimate government of Scotland.

The SNP presents itself as speaking for and on behalf of Scotland – sticking up for us against the perfidy of Westminster. See Sturgeon’s Twitter feed for examples of this – the Unionist parties are now referred to routinely as “Westminster parties”. They don’t represent Scotland – the SNP do.

Now, to give them their due, the SNP claim to speak on behalf of all Scottish people. They are positioning themselves as a One Nation party. They aren’t trying to represent SNP voters alone. In that sense a saltire has been draped across the entire electorate, and they have all been claimed for the SNP. We’re all Alex Salmond’s bairns.

But the trouble is, by othering the opposition as un-Scottish, the SNP are seeking to shut down any voices other than their own, plus some unthreatening fellow-travellers. And that is unhealthy for a democratic political culture. If the voters are encouraged to suspect the opposition of being secretly out to undermine Scotland, what happens when the SNP themselves make mistakes? Who is left to believe in?

Nicola Sturgeon is a remarkable politician, as is Alex Salmond. It’s testament to their abilities and track records that the SNP are in this position in the first place, and it’s perhaps understandable that the party’s senior figures haven’t known how to handle it. But they have surely undone some of their good work over the last few years by presenting themselves as the only legitimate, authentic Scottish political party, and celebrating themselves with a stadium tour.

Imagine the No parties had held a stadium celebration, with Darling’s name up in lights. Or someone peripheral like Alan Carmichael. Triumphalist, flag-waving demagogues! The SNP would have had a field day.

And the pity of it for the SNP is that they are actually good at governing Scotland. They’ve been very effective since they took power in 2007, at a time when the Labour Party were turning into the shambles they’ve remained ever since. The danger is that the SNP now start to resemble a mid-20th century populist party, and eventually lose credibility.

The ingredients are there:

• identification with the nation, alongside heavy hints that other parties are not identified with the nation;

• the attempt to crowd out other parties as unnecessary to the business of governing Scotland since they know what needs to be done;

• hostility to the neighbouring government, and the attempt to base their own governing legitimacy in their opposition to it;

• mass rallies;

• a romantic air of dewy-eyed defiance.

I worry about the SNP, I really do. Where did this outbreak of Peronism come from?

Scottish vanguardism

I should stress at this point that I evoke Peronism as a mere figure of speech; as an illustration of a certain governing tendency. The actual historical conditions of Peron’s Argentina and Sturgeon’s Scotland are, of course, completely different. But if you want to identify more literally with unrelated political movements, look no further than last week’s Radical Independence conference.

It took place next door to the SNP’s flag-waving extravaganza, and attracted 3000 people. This is amazing: 3000 people at a Radical Independence event! Unimaginable a year ago. And I’m sure there were lots of good things going on last weekend – indeed, many dear friends of mine were there and loved it.

But three aspects of the event have freaked me out.

Firstly, the conviction among attendees that the Yes movement is somehow aligned with Syriza in Greece, and Podemos in Spain, and the Catalan independence movement. Really? I think you’d struggle to find anything substantially in common with the Greek and Spanish experiences. And as for the Catalans, the only real similarity is that they’re seeking to walk away from their neighbours at a time of need, just like we did.

But that might be a bit harsh. More annoying is the combination of leftist vanguardism and Scottish manifest destiny that has infected supposedly radical conversations since the referendum.

To explain, there is a conviction (that word again) among fundamenalist Yessers that “the 45” possess a privileged understanding of the direction of history, and that independence is inevitable. Therefore, people who voted against independence are barriers to progress. This is the classic false consciousness trope – those people were wrong and don’t understand what’s good for them.

This sense of being the vanguard of a better future society shaped most of the Radical Independence workshops, and particularly the keynote speeches (with the notable exception of Patrick Harvie, who has retained his objectivity throughout).

The sentimental “we shall overcome” tone is new – no one really spoke like that before the Yes campaign lost. Everyone was at pains to stress how un-nationalist they were. And they were! But suddenly there’s something magical about Scotland that will guide her to independence. This stuff is not just embarrassing – it’s making people turn their brains off.

For example, I have read countless reports of the Radical Independence conference that culminated in utter jubilation because Tariq Ali assured everyone that independence would happen.

Tariq Ali!

People are genuinely listening to him as if he’s some sort of Nostradamus figure.

I thought the David Icke stuff was bad, but this is really weird.

It seemed at times during the referendum as if the Yes campaign was so embattled it would flail around in desperate search of any allies at all. The consequence of this has been an uncritical willingness to cite the most bizarre sources as evidence in support of the cause. I’ve written here about how Lord Ashcroft’s opinion polls have been seized upon by people who should know better (including Salmond) as “proof” that young people voted Yes – when in fact the sample sizes were microscopic, largely unusable, and if anything indicating that young voters were split down the middle. And since when was Lord Ashcroft a popular voice in progressive politics?

But far, far worse than any of that was the People’s Vow.

The event climaxed, in what sounds like an all too organismic sense, with the reading of a National Covenant de nos jours.

Where do you start with this? The People’s Vow is a classic piece of vanguard rhetoric. It doesn’t matter if we lost the referendum, it argues – we know better than the voters “who weren’t quite ready this time”. That’s the 2 million voters who weren’t quite ready. That’s a lot of voters. And, ready or not, the People’s Vow dictates terms on equality, land reform and other matters.

Who are these “People”, exactly? Are the people making the vow, or is it made on their behalf? And by whom? And is it also made on behalf of “the 55%” who weren’t quite advanced enough to understand their historical responsibilities?

It sounds to me like an act of breathtaking arrogance, frankly. Worse, it sounds a bit like Jacobinism.

The conference lapped this up, remarkably. A conference of supposed radicals, blind to the lessons we’ve learned from the history of radical, Jacobin vanguard groups, all of which claimed privileged insight into the direction of history and led their societies to disaster.

Good news

The 3000 people at the Radical independence event, and their 12,000 compatriots next door at the SNP’s last night of the proms gig, provided a ready audience for Scotland’s new newspaper, the National. Not uncoincidentally, it launched on the Monday morning after those events, following a flurry of excitement on social media over the weekend.

I haven’t bought the National. I’m assured that it contains good journalism, and I like some of the writers. No worries on that score. And I’m not even that bothered about the Herald stable’s opportunism in launching another Yes-friendly paper to make some money. That’s capitalism. Good luck to them.

It’s the jubilant attitude of the readers that winds me up.

It doesn’t actually matter that the National features talented journalists and writers. The people who are buying it would buy it even if it just contained loads of lorem ipsum placeholder text, and the odd photo of Stewart Hosie rocking out on the Pyramid Stage.

It’s a badge of honour. A newspaper.

It’s been a masterpiece of marketing, incidentally. Timing the launch for after the Yes movement’s big weekend was clever, and the construction of a narrative of scarcity – there are only 50,000 copies to go round 1.6m Yes voters! – was deftly handled. Best of all, the Herald’s publishers knew that Yes voters would fetishise a Yes paper as “theirs” and mobilise behind it in the post-referendum culture wars.

I’ve been amazed at the clumsiness of the SNP in publicly celebrating the National. After all of their complaints about state broadcasting during the referendum, they give their imprimatur to a newspaper?

And no one on the Yes side sees any contradiction between bemoaning partiality in news coverage, and then launching a Yes propaganda sheet?

Some journalists need to ask themselves if they have lost their objectivity.

I identified with the Yes movement because it was full of people open to evidence, to new ideas, to free thought. What happened to that?

The Yes side is now busy reading newspapers that reinforce the narrative that they were right and everyone else was wrong. I’m unconvinced that the cause of political progress is aided by this.

All political careers end in failure

The fourth event that alarmed me this week was the reaction to rumours that Gordon Brown will step down as an MP next year.

Older readers may remember Brown as a key figure in the rebuilding of the Labour Party in the 1980s and 90s. He was a heroic figure in Scotland and beyond. He was. And he dominated Whitehall in his time as Chancellor, bullying Blair relentlessly to get his own way on public spending. The result was a transformation in the state of our public services, unquestionably for the better. If you remember school, and now visit a school, your mind will be blown.

Somehow all of this is outweighed, in the minds of Yes voters, by his determination to argue for the preservation of the United Kingdom.

He gave a brilliant speech in the final week of the campaign and has been credited with swinging some wavering Labour voters back into the No camp.

Now, only people in the Westminster village could believe that one speech by one semi-retired politician determined the result of our independence referendum. But even if it had done – what is the problem with Brown disagreeing with the Yes campaign?

I have to acknowledge that he probably knows more about economics that I do. I recognise that he was qualified to speak. Some of his arguments meant nothing to me but his intervention can hardly be explained as a career move. He actually meant that stuff.

When word spread that Brown was planning to leave the Commons in 2015, the 45 were out in force on Twitter to condemn him.

Now, he was one of the two most important people in government for thirteen years, and a senior Labour figure in opposition for a decade before that, so there are inevitably a number of dark tales to tell about his career. But I know of no politician with a stronger commitment to eradicating child poverty. He never gave Blair a moment’s peace in his efforts to divert treasury funds to progressive causes. And the rejuvenation of our schools and hospitals (imperilled once again by the Tories) was largely down to him.

And he’s the ogre? What have the Yes politicians ever done to compare with that?

And this is the problem with the Yes movement’s obsession with punishing the Labour Party. Labour might well be a mess in Scotland. That’s a given. And for me the party’s leadership made an unfathomable error in commanding the membership to campaign for a No vote, rather than leaving it up to individuals to come to their own view.

But they aren’t actually the baddies!

If you think Gordon Brown is the personification of an evil party, then you either got interested in politics last month and haven’t finished the reading, or the Yes propaganda has warped your mind.

Yes fundamentalists, especially SNP activists, need to be careful that they don’t creep into GOP/ Tea Party-esque culture wars. Personality assassinations have been all too prevalent in Scottish politics for years, but the practice now risks discrediting the entire business of politics. When the career of a genuine giant of British politics is dismissed as a footnote because he opposed independence, we’re all diminished.

Jacobites and Jacobins

For me, much of this comes down to ideas of power and agency.

The rhetoric from the SNP, reinforced by a tidal wave of bile from people on Twitter with “45” in their picture, is that all Westminster politicians are at it. They fiddle their expenses (apparently no MP should have an allowance to fund a constituency office) and only ever turn up to Parliament to vote themselves a pay rise. Exhibit A here is an image shared widely on social media of the Commons chamber mostly empty for an emergency debate on devolving further powers to Scotland, and a packed chamber preparing to divide on the question of MP salaries.

Now, there are a couple of obvious points here. Firstly, if MPs spent all of their time in the Commons they wouldn’t be able to do anything else, like serve on committees, or deal with constituency business. Secondly, there is a bit of a difference between an afternoon debate and an actual Parliamentary vote.

But the danger of this rhetoric is that it denies the possibility of change through traditional politics. Remember that the Westminster system is based on representative democracy. Imperfect as the system is, MPs are actually voted in by human beings. Power is then exercised on the basis of expressed political will.

Just as importantly – the very fact that these points are being made so widely suggests that the referendum wasn’t the educative experience it felt like at the time.

Yes fundamentalists have found out lots of isolated facts – like the proportion of votes Gordon Brown attended at the Commons, or the value of Scotland’s taxation contribution to the Exchequer – without the broader political perspective that would help contextualise and make sense of them.

Consider recent Yes contributions on the subject of poverty. To listen to 45ers on Twitter you’d think all No voters actually want poverty to exist. The idea simply doesn’t occur to anyone that No voters might have consulted the same sources available to Yes voters, and concluded that a country without a plausible currency might not be the best bet for lifting living standards.

It has become a truism that Westminster causes poverty, while independence would eradicate it. Quite how a free Scotland would be sheltered from the pressures of the global economy is unclear.

This is not to say that independence wouldn’t have been a good thing – I remind the reader that I voted yes with great enthusiasm – but rather that Yes fundamentalists are no longer able to hold political ideas up to objective scrutiny either way. Everything is reduced to the binary independent/ not independent, and Bad Things are blamed on being not independent. Scotland’s nationhood status is, frankly, an insufficient explanation for all political phenomena.

A curious disjuncture has been allowed to go unchallenged between the SNP government’s assertion that it could make everything better, if only it had more powers, and the rejection by the Yes movement of the legitimacy of traditional (Westminster) politics. The Radical Independence conference was in many ways the high water mark of Yes anti-politics in this respect – the “Westminster” parties were routinely booed and the system seen as rigged, while vague programmes of political decentralism were advocated.

I can’t get my head around this.

Now, the Common Weal is the most interesting experiment in decentralised, community politics to emerge from the Yes movement. Its supporters are attracted to the network on account of its non party-aligned character, and they seem to have freedom to pursue local agendas within a fairly loose shared commitment to “social justice”. But Common Weal activists seem to be completely relaxed about the SNP entering its imperial phase and shutting down the very possibility of parliamentary opposition.

Why haven’t alarm bells rung anywhere? These two models of politics are completely incompatible.

Perhaps the Yes movement is now suffering due to a excess of charismatic leadership and a lack of intellectual leadership.

How else can Yes fundamentalists keep the following ideas going in their heads at once?

• Decentralising power is good, such as through networks like Common Weal;

While at the same time:

• The Scottish government needs more power.

These are contradictory ideas.

Meanwhile:

• Independent Scotland will be a real democracy, unlike Westminster, representing ideas squeezed out in UK politics;

But:

• Everyone should vote SNP.

At a stroke, the commitment to pluralism evaporates.

***

A conception of politics I find rewarding and stimulating is the “politics of everyday life” discussed by the late Bernard Crick. This theme of political thought takes seriously the idea of the personal as political – human relationships reflect and forge power relations, so are a legitimate and productive subject of political consideration.

The Yes movement used to be beautiful because it seemed to be about respecting difference and supporting human flourishing. The Yes movement was a carnival. It was fun, and it was funny. And by being fun, and funny, the Yes movement transformed people’s conceptions of what political campaigns could be like.

It’s not funny anymore. The Yes movement has hardened and lost its groove. The mocked up images on Twitter are just grumpy these days, or sanctimonious.

And anyone who is suspected of being less than 100% committed to Scottish independence is subjected to relentless sniping and abuse on social media. The journalist David Torrance must have the thickest skin in Scotland considering the grief he’s given online for having a critical perspective on the SNP leadership.

(On that note, I really hope Salmond regrets writing his arsey letter to the Herald slagging Torrance off after the referendum. The Yes movement hadn’t exactly covered itself in glory in terms of supporting journalistic independence before then, so letters to the editor from the First Minister seeking to intimidate fellow-citizens are pretty low and unimpressive.)

It’s important for individuals in a political community to respect the moral autonomy of other individuals. We all have our own stories, and our own motivations, and we all base our political ideas on our own experiences. The 2m Scottish voters who opted against independence did so for their own reasons. It’s unacceptable to belittle and attack them for reaching a different conclusion from the same evidence.

The electorate is always right, so they must be respected. Voters aren’t stupid. They don’t need ambitious Yes activists speaking for them and explaining why they “weren’t ready”.

***

The weeks since the referendum have not been good to the Yes campaign.

Feeling like the bullied, Yes fundamentalists have become the bullies.

Perceiving media bias against them, they have taken solace in media biased in their favour.

Certain that Westminster is undemocratic, they crave unopposed SNP government.

Furious at September’s show of strength by the UK state, they glory in mass rallies and projections of power.

And convinced of their moral authority, they seek to silence any dissenters on social media.

It has been observed that the ’45’ iconography seized upon in the aftermath of the referendum echoed the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Whether or not people intended this association, there is a resonance. The Yes movement has started to unconsciously love its defeat.

There is a death-urge that underpins the recent iconoclasm. That tone that Yes fundamentalists can’t help but adopt these days has a dewy-eyed, fatalistic quality to it: a sepia-tinted despairing sense of glorious defeat. That’s a dangerous tone. It’s erratic and irrational and neglects the consequences of actions.

To make matters worse, the Jacobite attitude is combined with another eighteenth century trope – Jacobinism. The Jacobins were the vanguard movement par excellence, convinced that they alone understood the direction of the French Revolution and possessed of a privileged entitlement to bend events to their will. This didn’t end well.

This is a toxic combination: Jacobite sentimentality and death-urged recklessness merged with Jacobin vanguardism. It’s reminiscent of nothing so much as the National Covenant, when Scottish people presumptuously convinced themselves of their entitlement to make a pact with God.

The National Covenant led to disaster. And Yes fundamentalism will hardly lead anywhere happier if it continues down its current, demented path.

Count me out of this shit.