This week’s edition of the Sunday Herald is a “referendum special” marking 200 days of the campaign to go (although actually it doesn’t have an awful lot more referendum coverage than a normal issue).

There are lots of things worth reading – as ever, we recommend spending a modest 69p for a digital copy via PressDisplay – but what really caught our eye were the two interviews with the heads of the Yes and No camps, Blairs Jenkins and McDougall.

The the two pieces are lumped together as one online, which makes it slightly easier to pick up on the thing that really jumped out at us. See if you can spot it.

BLAIR JENKINS:

“Blair Jenkins is proud of no longer being in control of the Yes campaign. In his 20 months as chief executive of Yes Scotland, the cross-party independence movement that includes the SNP, Greens and Scottish Socialists, he says it has mushroomed to such an extent it has developed a life of its own. Now, on the eve of a spring campaign offensive, things are well past the point where it is possible to track everything Yes Scotland’s volunteer army is getting up to. Ignorance really is bliss in such matters. ‘There is so much of it going on now,’ he explains cheerfully in his Glasgow headquarters. ‘Referendum cafes, public meetings, it’s enormous. We’re no longer able to have an accurate handle on what’s happening, because like a proper grassroots campaign it’s self-generating, it’s autonomous, people are getting on with it. The scale of that is quite phenomenal.'”

BLAIR MCDOUGALL:

“The ‘fence-sitting period’ is well and truly over, declares Blair McDougall as both sides of the indyref campaign mark 200 days until the vote.

The campaign director of Better Together, the pro-union campaign formed by Labour, the LibDems and the Tories, says the referendum is finally coming into focus for voters. Chancellor George Osborne ruling out of a formal currency union with an independent Scotland; EC president Manuel Barroso raising the spectre of long, hard EU negotiations on EU membership; and household names such as Standard Life warning of jobs moving south in the event of a Yes vote.”

One campaign director rejoicing in the enthusiasm of ordinary people getting out on the streets to make their country better. The other glorying in deploying a hated Tory Chancellor, a right-wing Eurocrat and Conservative-supporting big business with a history of opposing devolution to frighten people into thinking their nation would be too wee and too poor to make a success of running its own affairs.

Just our biased spin? Hardly. McDougall admits it openly:

“He won’t discuss the detail behind Osborne’s announcement, but it is understood the Better Together parties agreed the line and the schedule more than six months ago. Rather than a reaction to recent polls, the timing was set to coincide with the onset of the financial reporting season, forcing big businesses such as Standard Life to comment. Better Together’s plan now is to link currency to the cost of living crisis and job security, more pressure points for swaying voters. ‘For those people in the middle, it’s much more a personal transactional decision, about their own finances and their family’s finances.’ It’s not inspirational – reducing a historic moment to getting people in a sweat about their bank balance – but ‘if it works, it works’ is the calculation at Better Together’s headquarters in Glasgow. ‘Our strategy is working,’ insists McDougall. ‘Our message will always be the economic risk and gamble of independence versus the safer, better way to create a better Scotland through devolution, which offers you distinctive decision-making with the back up of the UK.'”

The last words on the Yes Blair, in contrast, are these:

“Jenkins isn’t a campaign wonk trying to grind out a result. He’s a believer, hoping that big inspirational themes – opportunity, optimism, change – will convince people to back independence. The job, he says, remains ‘an absolute pleasure and privilege’, despite challenging weeks. ‘I come to work every day with a spring in my step and a song in my heart because I am absolutely convinced this is the right thing for Scotland to do. I have never felt this energised and enthused by anything I’ve done in my life as I am with this. I fundamentally believe Scotland will be a healthier, wealthier, happier society as an independent country. That gets you through the toughest week.'”

Hope and positivity versus threats and fear. The independence debate in a nutshell.