While toddling through Shawlands this week, I chanced across the Labour's Glasgow South candidate, Tom Harris, campaigning outside the local Co-op. Having politely explained that I wasn't with him in this election, I took the opportunity to ask him about a letter which has been circulating in the constituency, inviting folk who voted No on the 18th of September 2014 to save his bacon on the 7th of May.





"I thought Jim had said that Scottish Labour isn't a unionist party?" I enquired. "But I'm a unionist," he said. In his affably bluff way, Tom explained that he needed every vote going, and if that involved putting the fear of god up the Tories of Newlands, he'd make no apology for doing so. "And I suppose you're pretty right-wing too, so - " I quipped, for villainy - "I suppose I am," he responded, with unexpected candour. I sidled on. Good luck to him. He'll need it.





"55% of people voted no, back me to stop the Nationalist juggernaut." John Curtice has been pouring But the encounter made me think a wee bit about the assumptions lying behind Tom's letter, and being pushed nationally by Liberal Democrats in tight spots, that the Better Together alliance can be cobbled back together to save their skins.John Curtice has been pouring buckets of icy water over the idea that tactical voting represents an effective anti-Nationalist strategy over most of the country, arguing that the sums just don't add up. As Professor Curtice points out, there aren't enough Labour, Tories or Liberal Democrat voters in the overwhelming majority of seats to make a decisive difference, even if folk were inclined to lend their vote to a Better Together ally.





numerically problematic - it also flies in the face of what the referendum taught us about the reasons and attitudes lying behind the No vote. Tom and the Liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten who the 55% are, and why they voted against independence last September. The recent findings of the But the thinking behind this isn't justproblematic - it also flies in the face of what the referendum taught us about the reasons and attitudes lying behind the No vote. Tom and the Liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten who the 55% are, and why they voted against independence last September. The recent findings of the Scottish Election Study suggest that the No lead did not come down to British identities, or optimism about the Union, nor widespread pessimism about independence, but fear, risk and uncertainty.





29.5% of the No vote. To put a more concrete number on that, just 590,568 of the 2,001,926 votes attracted by the No campaign seem to have hinged to any significant extent on British identities. The study concludes that identities - Scottish and British - provided core support for both Yes and No campaigns, the outcome was decided by perceptions of economic risk. The most recent tranche of survey data from the study suggested that feelings of Britishness or attachment to the Union account for justof the No vote. To put a more concrete number on that, just 590,568 of the 2,001,926 votes attracted by the No campaign seem to have hinged to any significant extent on British identities.





This chimes with my own experiences. If this referendum has revealed one thing, it is that Scots allegiance to the British state is - perhaps disturbingly - provisional. A popular, winning, organic unionism has not emerged. If anything, the Conservative and Unionist Party seems hell-bent on salting the earth across the border, to ensure no sprouts grow.



