“Yes”
The word will quickly be, if it isn’t already, synonymous with the SNP and winning independence. It is important therefore that the Scottish Government has clear lines of demarcation between what is official devolved Government business and what is part of the referendum campaign.
The above may look like a page from the SNP’s prospectus on independence but it’s actually taken from the Scottish Enterprise website.
I missed this when Labour MSP Kezia Dugdale first blogged on it but I’m surprised the media hasn’t picked up on it yet as I rather suspect that this is the first of many instances where the SNP will be criticised for blurring its responsibilities as a Government of a devolved Parliament and its burning ambitions as a political party.
For me, it’s over the line, quite a way over the line, as it is quite blatantly an attempt to aid the independence campaign by associating it with government bodies. ‘You want growth, you say Yes to Growth, well vote Yes in 2014’ is the quite clear overture here.
It’s not all going to be one way of course. Indeed, the SNP has already fired a very meek shot across the unionist bows for using “Better Together” when (prepare to be outraged), NHS Scotland are already using that phrase. Personally, I think the unionists are jumping on the Better Nation bandwagon here and since we thought of that phrase ourselves we… (what’s that? Alasdair Gray? Dennis Lee?). Ok, never mind…
Taking every fair advantage to get one over on the opposition is reasonable, undermining fairness (and the potential inappropriate use of public funds) is really not. A heavy price would and should be paid by anyone who falls into the latter camp and so parties should tread with caution here. It’s easier to lose a reputation than it is to build one.
The SNP needs to hit everything with a straight bat for the next two years if it’s to have any chance of winning the referendum. This “Yes” linkage with Scottish Enterprise? Well, it’s just not cricket.
#1 by EdinburghEye on June 13, 2012 - 8:18 am
I dunno – I think Kezia is reaching a bit. Should all Scottish government agencies refrain from using the word YES in a header from now till autumn 2014 in order to avoid being confused with the independence campaign?
It seems a bit like LOCOG declaring that no one but themselves shall be allowed to use the word “Olympic” in London, or Universal Pictures trying to claim ownership of the word “Jurassic”. Only even more over the top.
“Say Yes to” is an extremely standard phrase.
#2 by Jeff on June 13, 2012 - 9:42 am
“Should all Scottish government agencies refrain from using the word YES in a header from now till autumn 2014 in order to avoid being confused with the independence campaign?”
Well, yes, I think they should. I’m not saying all Government documentation shouldn’t have the word Yes in it but headline campaigns shouldn’t muddy the waters like this.
Rather ironically, in terms of separating its devolved duties from its independence aims, the Scottish Government has to be, and be seen to be, independent.
#3 by Hammer on June 13, 2012 - 8:52 am
It’s not gained very much media traction because “Say Yes” is an excellent example of a common, positive theme in advertising which the public easily identify with. Off the top of my head, I recall a moisturiser, a Scottish newspaper and a supermarket using it as part of advertising campaigns in the past few years.
#4 by Jeff on June 13, 2012 - 9:25 am
I just don’t buy that at all I’m afraid. The timing is highly suspicious and, while ‘Say Yes to Growth’ is a reasonable enough strapline for encouraging entrepreneurs and business activity, the big whopping “YES” that is front and centre of this advert (and others) is not really the key word to sell. You see “Yes” and you think, to what? You see “Growth” and you understand what the message is.
Further, we’ve needed growth for a couple of years now. Why now? The ‘Say Yes to Growth’ campaign starts around the same time as the ‘Yes Scotland’ campaign. I think a bit of professional scepticism is healthy.
#5 by James on June 13, 2012 - 10:08 am
The real shocker, I think, is hypocrisy. The Scottish Enterprise campaign started before the Declaration of Cineworld, so by SNP logic their independence vehicle shouldn’t be allowed to be called Yes Scotland. Perhaps Aye Scotland would have been better in the circumstances 😉
#6 by Aidan on June 13, 2012 - 11:03 am
mibbes
#7 by Jane Martin on June 13, 2012 - 10:33 am
Hi. Thought I’d provide a bit of background. We were looking for a simple message to encourage businesses to take action in spite of the current economic climate. We’d found that many – even if they had capital – were adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach to their future development. In speaking to businesses, what also was clear is that they were hearing a lot of “no” – from banks and from others. And we wanted a simple concept to contradict that; to provide a platform to showcase businesses that were saying ‘yes’ to opportunities and taking risks; as well as sending a message that if companies wanted to challenge us and look for support in achieving significant growth, we’d focus on how we could say ‘yes’ to helping them.
Obviously we were aware of the political environment as we developed the campaign, but we were not aware of the imminent launch of the “Yes” campaign on independence. This was co-incidence.
This is an 8-week campaign. I’d be interested in views on whether we should continue to develop our approach/ concept after that. Thanks.
#8 by Jeff on June 13, 2012 - 10:40 am
Much appreciated Jane, thanks for the comment providing the context.
#9 by Duncan Hothersall (@dhothersall) on June 13, 2012 - 11:05 am
This is indeed helpful context. But Scottish Enterprise were not aware of the imminent launch of the “Yes” campaign? I’m not sure that’s a terribly convincing line.
#10 by Commenter on June 13, 2012 - 1:02 pm
“Alright folks, here’s the deal. Avoid saying ‘yes’ for the next two years okay? Also, we really want to avoid the phrase ‘better together’. Come to think of it, lay off the words ‘together’ and ‘better’ too. And don’t mention Scotland or Britain.”
#11 by Iain Menzies on June 13, 2012 - 11:13 am
Which rather begs the question, did anyone in the Scottish Government who would have known about the launch of the Yes campaign know about the development in any (significant) detail of this campaign?
#12 by Doug Daniel on June 13, 2012 - 1:34 pm
Maybe you should change it to “Yes to growth, no to separation” to avoid incurring the wrath of politicians with nothing better to do than nit-pick and look for problems that aren’t there. Or maybe just “no to separation”.
#13 by Jeff on June 13, 2012 - 1:49 pm
Don’t give up the day job Doug…
#14 by Chris on June 13, 2012 - 11:28 am
I don’t know who your organisation reports to Jane. But can you tell us if there was any ministerial input into the choice of slogan and colours used?
#15 by Commenter on June 13, 2012 - 1:05 pm
Come on now – Scottish Enterprise weren’t to know that the No campaign would be using blue in their logo.
#16 by Commenter on June 13, 2012 - 12:20 pm
I thought Kezia Dugdale’s objections to ‘Yes’ were silly when I heard them, but then the SNP gave them credence with their silly comments on ‘Better Together’.
But then, perhaps ‘fight nonsense with nonsense’ is a winning strategy.
#17 by Doug Daniel on June 13, 2012 - 2:04 pm
You’re right to an extent, but there’s a difference between “Yes Scotland” and “Yes To Growth”, whereas there is no difference to “Better Together” and “Better Together”.
If it came down to trademarking issues, only one of those would be classed as an infringement…
#18 by Doug Daniel on June 13, 2012 - 1:58 pm
No one is stopping unionists from adopting “Yes UK” as a slogan…
To me, this is just Kezia looking for things to criticise the Scottish Government about. Coupled with her recent criticisms over modern apprenticeships – which resulted in her being left with egg on her face on Newsnicht recently against the increasingly impressive Angela Constance – she’s looking more and more like a tedious opposition-for-opposition’s-sake politician. It’s a shame she can’t be more like Drew Smith, who gives you hope that perhaps there will be life in the Labour party post-independence after all.
Considering Labour’s “jawbz, jawbz, jawbz” mantra, they’re not very supportive of measures taken to support jobs and job creation.
#19 by Craig Gallagher on June 13, 2012 - 2:30 pm
Why, when Alex Salmond is sitting in front of Levenson and Rangers FC are imploding under pressure from the taxman, did you choose to post about this topic Jeff? On a slow news day, I’d understand, but today is anything but.
For what it’s worth, the confusion isn’t helpful but it’s also not exactly malicious either. I don’t really accept that the Scottish Government – as opposed to the Scottish National Party – should not be involved in the day-to-day pursuit of independence, given that achieving such a goal was their express policy prior to being elected in a landslide victory. A lot of the criticism of last week’s vote in favour of independence in the Scottish Parliament has been holier-than-thou, as though governments aren’t supposed to advance party agendas and instead concentrate on purely bureaucratic matters. This doesn’t reflect reality, only sour grapes from those in opposition.
#20 by Jeff on June 13, 2012 - 2:58 pm
(1) I’m pretty reactive when it comes to blogging so I didn’t realise it was Salmond’s day at Leveson and, even if I had, I don’t really have anything to say on it.
(2) Rangers, it’s not even nearly as big a news story as the column inches would suggest. I don’t even know what news today you’re referring to as, to be honest, I’m not that interested in it (that could be due to the Euros taking up all my footy attention). NB – they should be relegated to the 3rd division I think, but that’s as far as my interest stretches.
I can appreciate this ‘Yes to Growth’ story is hardly Watergate, but I genuinely found it interesting and it splits opinion and that, typically, is all that is required before I’ll whack it up on the blog.
Guest posts on Salmond @ Leveson or Rangers would be welcome if that’s what floats your particular boat Craig… 😉
As for your second point. I totally disagree. Skipping over the fact that the SNP only won ~45% of the vote, the mandate was to hold a referendum on independence, not use the levers of power at Holyrood to jimmy the result in their favour. I thought the vote last week (the week before?) at Holyrood where the Scottish Parliament endorsed independence was a really shabby affair.
#21 by Craig Gallagher on June 13, 2012 - 3:45 pm
Haha, fair enough. The Rangers issue is exercising my mind these days, not least because I’m fascinated by its implications for Unionism and a hypothetical post-independence Scotland. It’s flown under the radar of a lot of bloggery – with the exception of the Wings Over Scotland blog – but I’ve held back from commenting too much in prose because I’m a Celtic fan and would inevitably draw opprobrium, if the reaction to my tweets on the matter are anything to go by.
Again, I would stress that I think criticisms of the independence vote and the supposed necessary decoupling of the Scottish Government from independence doesn’t reflect reality, only idealistic theory. Yes, the SNP only won 45% of the vote, but in the context of a multi-party system that’s a huge share. Not to mention the fact that everyone knew how the electoral system worked heading into May’s vote, and presumably would abide by its result.
It doesn’t do anything to jimmy the result in their favour to make it official that the Scottish Parliament backs independence. It was already de facto, now it’s simply de jure. Likewise, crossover between supposedly independent bodies like Scottish Enterprise and the ambitions of the Scottish Government is surely to be expected, however much we may value NGO autonomy. Even the vaunted neutrality of the civil service is a fiction: they are expressly there to do the bidding of the current government, and can only abstain on party political matters like conferences. They can’t do so on policies, however ideological or partisan they may be. So in that regard, it doesn’t strike me as all that problematic that there’s overlap between slogans here. It’s confusing, for sure, and potentially misleading, but as their messages effectively converge, only a belief that governments have a duty, like Caesar’s wife, to be above suspicion could provoke criticism.
#22 by Indy on June 13, 2012 - 9:20 pm
The Scottish Government has absolutely no requirement to be neutral about independence. The Scottish Government supports independence and has a perfect right to actively promote that policy and to use the resources available to them to do so.
What I think you are suggesting is that Scottish Government resources should not be used to support the Yes campaign and that is quite correct. But I think this example is kind of stretching it.
I was pondering some kind of convoluted sentence here culminating with the Bank that likes to say YES. For those who remember that slogan. But that would also be stretching it just a bit too far.
#23 by scottish_skier on June 13, 2012 - 10:05 pm
Independence supporting parties got 51% of the popular vote in May 2011. The parliament was therefore perfectly entitled to endorse independence. If someone placed their X next to the SNP, Greens, SSP, Margo, Solidarity etc, then they were doing so in full knowledge of the potential outcome of that.
I note that Dave and Ed joined together in the ‘mother of all parliaments’ to voice their mutual support the continuation of the UK union.
Westminster supported the Union, the Scottish parliament supported independence. Par for the course in constitutional situations such as this.
#24 by Jim Bennett on June 13, 2012 - 3:45 pm
I must admit, if I was in the SNP government I would attempt to push every boundary and come as close to the line as possible over the next two years. There’s one shot at the campaign and the unionist campaign will leave no dirty trick unused. Every aspect of the levers of power should be used to its maximum extreme (whilst denying entirely that that is what’s happening). There’s no second prize in this.
#25 by Observer on June 13, 2012 - 8:09 pm
Scottish Enterprise using Scottish colours & saying yes when the banks are saying no doesn’t really seem all that suspicious to me.
Is every positive message to do with Scotland going to be viewed as a subliminal message to vote yes in the referendum?
Are we going to question everything that could be viewed as a subliminal message to vote no?
#26 by Jeff on June 13, 2012 - 8:53 pm
Not convinced the banks are saying No. People are hording their money due to lack of market confidence.
And of course appreciate the view that there’s nothing to this, particularly in light of Jane’s comment; I’m somewhat more suspicious of course.
#27 by Colin Macleod on June 13, 2012 - 11:16 pm
So if this was published tomorrow would you be still be as cynical?
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/218982/0058805.pdf
#28 by M G on June 14, 2012 - 1:44 am
Jeff,you blog on Scottish life/society yet you are honestly saying the Rangers story”it is not nearly as big a news story as the columns suggest” seriously?
‘The Rangers story’ is not just about Rangers and I write that as a non Rangers fan,’the Rangers story ‘is about accepted business practice in football, about eminent figures in the Scottish business community, how clubs are run, sycophancy,media compliance, unemployment, disparity between footballers wages/lifestyles and the fans who pay to watch them,taxes, HMRC , the impact on a community and belonging then lets spread it out a bit ,the West of Scotland (pockets in the rest of Scotland),the Irish connection,tribalism,sectarianism,inclusiveness ,exclusiveness, violence,alcohol,the NHS, the orange order,protestantism? ,,the union flag, the establishment ,the union. I could go on.
Whether a football fan or not ,the Rangers debacle in some facet or other shines a light on how Scotland operates. Even I as a non football fan can see if the old assumptions,the old established ‘norm’ is challenged or removed there could be a seismic shift in Scotland.
#29 by Jeff on June 14, 2012 - 8:15 am
I simply disagree that it’s that big a deal.