We Asked the Strategist Behind the 'No' Vote in Scotland: How Do You Win a Referendum?

From Brexit: the Movie to the late-in-the-day heroics from Gordon "Better Together" Brown, the lead up to the EU referendum has already proved a minefield of false, fear-heavy, frantic campaign tactics. The Brexiteers are up to the worst sort of fear-mongering around immigration and democracy, even suggesting, for one terrible moment, that the Orlando attacks should be a reason to vote Leave. Meanwhile the Remain campaign predicts recessions like they're rainclouds, yet are seemingly unable to name a single concrete law that has come as a result of EU membership that benefits ordinary people.

The ongoing confusion on both sides is not unlike the heated furor that gradually built around the time of the 2014 Scottish referendum. The big question there—should Scotland stay in, or leave, the United Kingdom—was a similarly divisive, yet similarly straightforward, "Should I stay or should I go?" scenario. In the end, the union remained intact, but the nationalists were often ahead in the polls, and were only thwarted by relentless, smart campaigning from Better Together.

So how do you win a referendum campaign? How do you sway voters from such stark extremities as "yes" or "no", rather than extolling the nuances of different parties as you would during a general election? How do you combat obvious press bias? How do you make "Remain" sound like a choice at all, rather than a bland continuation of the status quo?

In order to get answers to some of these questions, I turned to one of the masterminds behind the Better Together campaign during the Scottish independence referendum, Jim Gallagher. Gallagher is a former civil servant who aided the campaign as a strategist. I asked him what the parallels between the EU referendum and the Scottish independence were, and what could be done by either side to win.

VICE: You won with the "Better Together" campaign, which was about a continuation of the status quo. How do you make "no" or "remain" feel like a choice rather than just the boring option?
Jim: This is a real structural problem for the Better Together campaign in Scotland and the Remain campaign in the EU referendum. Those on the other side can claim active components of change, can offer something new, they can be the people offering hope. By contrast, those arguing for the status quo have got a problem, because the shortcomings of the status quo are evident. You can see them, you can touch them. Independent Scotland, as far as the SNP was concerned, was able to have the taxes of Luxembourg and the social services of Sweden. The Brexit folks can claim cheerfully that they will offer all of the benefits of the EU in the way of free trade, without any of the problems in terms of regulation. Both of those claims are mendacious. No doubt about that, but that means the people arguing for the status quo have to knock them down and are immediately seen as negative. It's a structural problem in the referendum that no amount of clever campaigning can get around completely.

I guess the flipside is that the status quo have collective "fear of the unknown" playing to their strengths?
Undoubtedly. The conventional wisdom is that people vote for what they know, and I think there is some truth in that. What both campaigns have tried to do, and what the Better Together campaign succeeded in doing, is making sure their offering isn't simply the status quo but that it has some element of change to it.

What are you impressions of the referendum so far?
It's quite interesting to compare the two referendum campaigns. The Scottish referendum campaign was all-consuming for a long time. Certainly from a Scottish perspective, this one seems much less engaged, much less lively, and much less in the public eye. The interesting question from that is how it will affect turnout. Turnout for the Scottish referendum was extraordinarily high, whereas turnout in this referendum might well be markedly lower than that. Just how much lower might well determine the outcome.

How important is the backing of significant figures, people like Gordon Brown or Nigel Farage?
People certainly look to identify with a significant figure. For example in the Scottish referendum campaign the dominant figure on the "Yes" side was Alex Salmond who was trenchant and not necessarily too worried about getting all the details right. The similarities between him and Boris Johnson are quite obvious. The story of the Scottish referendum, however, also includes the intervention of Gordon Brown, quite late in the day, which was hugely influential. His interventions were an argument from the left, but were also very personal, and in many respects he's reprising not just that role but many of those arguments in the EU referendum.

Does it matter if parties don't present a united front?
It's a tactical difficulty for the parties, and certainly in the Scottish referendum one of the most successful slogans for the left was "vote yes and get rid of the Tories forever", meaning Labour found themselves in the rather difficult position of voting to remain in the UK and by extension voting for the Tories. However it is possible to simply say there are positive arguments from both the left and the right. On the right it's free trade. In the case of both Scotland and the EU, there are economic losses if you leave that area of free trade. Then, from the left's perspective, you can also make an argument for social solidarity and burden-sharing between nations.

What about the emotional side of it? How much of a deciding factor is patriotism in both campaigns?
It's certainly the case that both referendums appeal to patriotism. Obviously it was central to the SNP's argument, and in many ways the Leave campaign is an English nationalist campaign. Scotland has always had its nationalists and Scotland has always had its little Englanders, but what they're doing is adding to their support by appealing to people who are feeling disenfranchised or are feeling left behind. People who feel they are losing out from the current set up, who are offered a radical alternative that they can choose to believe. In Scotland there were three major areas that voted yes and they were more or less the three poorest areas of the country. The people in the bottom 10% of income distribution were disproportionately likely to vote yes. You see the same thing in the EU campaign. People who feel disenfranchised, people whose incomes have stagnated or even fallen in recent years, are looking for a cure and are able to cling on to the idea that 'if only we were separate from these foreign people, these people not part of my nation, then things would be better.'

The tabloid press, which is largely anti Europe, has been said to be influential in this referendum. Do you think the press play a big role?
Well the print media played a reasonably big role in the Scottish referendum. The majority was pro-UK and pro-Better Together. In this case what we've got is substantial numbers of the broadsheets, the Telegraph, the Mail, are actively pro-exit. It's not so much that they are influential in of themselves, as most people get their news from a screen rather than a piece of paper, but they are certainly influential in the political process. The very striking thing about this referendum is that it's essentially a private grief inside the Conservative party, and much of that is being driven by the Conservative press's absolute determination to push for Brexit for reasons which I find, I must say, very hard to follow.

So how would you advise the Leave.EU campaign?
First, you must make big claims about what will happen. In the Scottish referendum the SNP claimed that Scotland would retain the UK pound, that of course became a debating point when the UK government said perhaps it couldn't. The Leave campaign can assert things without worrying too much about how accurate they are. Mr Gove, for example, has claimed that there will be a free trade area. Now the Remain camp have to spend their time explaining why that wouldn't be the case, making them look negative rather than positive.

Second, bang on the patriotic card. Saying to people that if they vote remain they are unpatriotic is potentially very powerful.

A third thing, if I were advising the Leave camp, is the ability to talk fear. In the Scottish referendum it was arguing that only independence would save the NHS which certainly worked for some people. In the Brexit campaign the fear button is ready made in the form of immigration, and if I was advising them, I'm afraid that's button I would tell them to press.

How about the Stronger In campaign?
For the Remain campaign it's important not to be backed into the corner of only talking about risk. There's a lot of risk here but you need to express that not only as bad things that will happen if you leave the EU but the good things if you remain.

Secondly, would be pointing out that remaining in the EU is just as patriotic, just as British, just as English in particular, as voting to leave.

The third is making a positive offer. Mr Cameron has already done his negotiations but perhaps he needs another positive offer on the table.

Thanks, Jim.

Follow Angus on Twitter

More from VICE:

London's Romanian Sex Workers Are Worried That Brexit Would Screw Them

Why Is the British Press So Overwhelmingly Pro-Brexit?

British Ex-Criminals Who Hid Out in Europe Told Us What They Think of the EU Referendum