Dear All
Slogans can help define a campaign, pick the right slogan and it can lodge in the minds of the public and stick.
The classic example is ‘Labour’s not working’ used by the Tories to usher in 18 years of Tory rule under Margaret Thatcher.
The YES UK campaign has come up with a slogan “Better Together”.
For their campaign it is an excellent slogan to use, it is also been used by others namely to front an NHS Scotland programme.
It isn’t usual for political parties to use bits of other people’s material, the Scottish National Party ran with a slogan ‘be part of better’ which looks like it was lifted straight out of the SKY broadcasting slogan “believe in better”.
The YES UK campaign has set up a limited company called Better Together Ltd much in the same way as the SNP set up Yes Scotland as a legal entity.
Former chancellor Alistair Darling is among the directors and is a leading light in the YES UK campaign.
In the latter end of the Brown regime, Darling was seen as the man with gravitas, what Alex Salmond is to populist politics, Alastair Darling is to serious politics.
In recognising the power of such a positive slogan, the SNP have accused the anti-independence campaign of “hiding behind a phrase already in use” and of copying a name that supports NHS boards, staff and patients.
When visiting people in hospital, visitors sometimes take grapes, however the SNP seem to think this is a time for sour grapes.
It isn’t, it doesn’t matter what the other side is doing if you believe in the strength of your own campaign and the arguments that back it up.
If someone is doing something different, it is worth looking at but reality is that Yes Scotland should already have an encompassing strategy in place of how they intend to run their Yes Scotland Campaign.
If they intend to make it up as they go along they will become unstuck.
Case in point, the ‘Declaration of Cineworld’, rushed, botched and woeful.
This was one abortion that wasn’t carried out on the NHS and it showed!
SNP MSP James Dornan said that the Better Together campaign, which is due to be launched next week, was “failing at the first hurdle”.
Does that mean that Alex Salmond nicking the bit of the American Constitution was also “failing at the first hurdle?”
The YES UK is going to be a serious campaign, a professional campaign and a positive campaign, the Yes Scotland campaign will have to match them.
Given the lack of talent in the Scottish National Party, as displayed at the ‘Declaration of Cineworld’, they better get their thinking caps on for Yes Scotland and start to outsource.
Now, we will find out how clever Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are in a ‘falling market’.
My analysis is they are going to go spectacularly bust with their current strategy.
And as the SNP know, George Laird is always right and ahead of the curve.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
I'll vote YES.
ReplyDeleteI don't care what kind of nonsense and scaremongering you come up with, there are more brains in the YES camp than in the no. It is the natural way for a nation to be. You must be 'haunted' to think otherwise.
Smearing the SNP won't work and only helps to destroy the credibility of the No camp and their hold over the media and institutions of this country who have peddled lie after lie about the facts. The Union is finished in 2016. Then the real facts will emerge.