Thanks to Andrew Smith for this guest post. Andrew is a Scottish born communications professional in London. This article is a follow- on from this one. You can buy his debut novel here.

The YES Scotland campaign was launched two weeks ago by an array of actors, politicians and grassroots activists. Quite possibly the most significant long term development has been the launching of a new petition/ declaration in support of independence. The target is to achieve one million signatures in advance of the referendum and to use the list as a tool to contact and motivate activists.

The database will be very useful, although personally I think that setting a target of one million signatures was a mistake. This is not least because it is an incredibly ambitious target and after one week there were only 15000, half of which came within the first 24 hours. The focus on attaining one million signatures is misguided also because it assumes all supporters have internet access and would be comfortable giving their details to a central campaign office. It’s also a misleading indicator of the levels of support for the policy. The main reason for this is because despite not having a vote I am able to sign it from my flat in North London. There is no block on people with more than one email address signing it multiple times (for example I have 4 functioning email addresses that I use for different reasons.)

The campaign has chosen to launch with over 2 years left to the referendum because this gives more time to focus on building a strong grassroots movement. This is vital because it will have to be inclusive to be successful. The relationship between the YES campaign and the SNP will be very important in determining how successful the campaign is. The campaign has to be broader than the SNP, even if every SNP voter supported independence (which is not the case) then that would still not amount to a majority of the country (less than 25% of those eligible to vote.) The response has been to ensure that Patrick Harvie has played a prominent role and to invite traditionally ‘old labour’ figures as Colin Fox and Dennis Canavan. How important are these people?  The combined vote of the SSP and Greens may have only represented 4.8% of the electorate last year, 4.4% of which was the Greens, but in a referendum where every vote counts their influence could be decisive. Will the public see it as a genuine cross party and community based campaign? Only time will tell, although I’m not convinced that stunts such as the hosting of a vote on Scottish independence in the Scottish Parliament (in which all but 3 of the votes in favour came from SNP MSPs) does a great deal to show the breadth of the movement.

This is why it is important that Yes Scotland keeps a level of autonomy from the SNP. This will be hard to begin with as it was primarily instigated and funded by the SNP and it will be a while before it is able to function fully as a campaigning body. In contrast the NO campaign has every reason to ignore Yes Scotland for now and treat the referendum as a choice between the union and the specific policies of the SNP. One of the key tactics has been to raise a lot of structural questions about an independent Scotland and until now the SNP response has been a combination of uncertain assertions and a reminder that most policy decisions will be made after the next election. The problem with this is that when the SNP make claims on issues that most people deem central to the referendum (currency issues and relationship with the Bank of England) then they can be seen to be speaking for the wider YES campaign, at least for the time being.

At the moment the NO campaign is still functioning as a very loose party political coalition as opposed to a formal and structured campaign. The reason for this is obvious; the referendum is a numbers game and if the unionist parties communicate with their own voters and keep them onside then they will win. In theory the unionist parties do not even have to attract a single new supporter to win the referendum; all that they have to do is inspire and mobilise the ones that they already have. In this sense they would be well advised to keep the approach that they already have and avoid the obvious pitfalls that would come from the three parties routinely campaigning together under an overtly unionist banner. By keeping the structure as a loose collection of party political campaigns that is complemented by individual endorsements from figures as diverse as Alex Ferguson and George Galloway and stunts such as the release of well timed survey data they can attack the SNP from all angles.

Closer to the time the NO campaign will need to formalise a bit more, but unlike the YES campaign there is no imperative to do that yet. The smart approach would be for them to delay this as much as possible and to avoid having the campaign defined by any one person. The argument they should make should be based on the fact that Britain means different things to all people and therefore there is not one overarching reason for the union aside from vague premonitions of unity. There is also no need for any formal NO campaign to take one united position on devo-plus or to wed themselves to the status quo, instead they should take the firmly non committal position that all of these points will be open for discussion as soon as the referendum is over.

So this is where I believe we are. We have seen the emergence of one formal campaign that desperately needs to prove its breadth and one informal campaign which is more likely to meet in Alasdair Darling’s flat than it is to meet in public. I would expect this to be the case for some time. Expect the YES campaign to organise more endorsements from well known women and members of the business community (who were far too few at the launch) and to start trying to develop the essential grassroots networks in every town across the country. The NO campaign will continue to focus on the economy as opposed to any particularly emotional arguments. If the NO campaign can paint Yes Scotland as being a front for Alex Salmond and the SNP as a group of naive fanatics then they can turn the campaign into a battle of misplaced hearts against sensible and realistic heads and they will be half way towards victory.

Only the most blinkered of Nationalists will fail to accept the extent to which Lamont easily pulled and pushed Salmond from pillar to post at yesterday’s FMQs.

The apparent suggestion from Nicola Sturgeon that Scotland would have representation on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee after independence seemed errant and certainly wasn’t helped by Salmond’s vague reference to having talked to Mervyn King recently. The old adage ‘It’s the economy stupid’ has probably been shortened and switched to simply ‘stupid economy’ within SNP circles as outside market forces are the single biggest millstone around the Nationalist neck these days, and for many days to come.

The Treasury sought to lance this particular issue for the SNP today with an appropriately respectful but firm put down of the suggestion that Scotland would have representation on the MPC. The Treasury is not predisposed to helping out the Scottish Government, but it’s not difficult to assume that they are correct.

Alex Salmond should have heard the alarm bells yesterday and fobbed off the question by saying there are two long years to work these details through but he was fatally undermined by allowing half-baked ideas out into the public domain in the first place. People will only be convinced by hard facts and definitive answers from the key stakeholders, be it Bank of England, European Commission, HMRC or whoever. Romantic witterings from independence proponents of ‘Well, the way I see it…’ simply won’t muzzle the custard.

Faced with stubborn poll ratings, seemingly unable to preach beyond the converted (be it at yesterday’s dumb Parliament vote or last week at Cineworld) and a quietly confident set of unionist arguments amounting to ‘why bother?’, the Yes bandwagon is stuck in the dirt. To coin a phrase, the SNP cannot go on like this. Something’s got to give.

The ambitious intention to out-canvas the unionist side and use sophisticated data gathering techniques to give the Yes team an edge is impressive but insufficient. You don’t win arguments without a winning argument and, for me, there are only two scenarios that can lead to a Yes result in 2014 – one is in the SNP’s hands and the other out.

There’s only so many u-turns that any politician can make while still holding onto their credibility. Just look at George Osborne’s pasty tax and charity cap about turns. However, the SNP really has to think through its insistence that it wants to hold on to Sterling and seriously consider embracing a Scottish pound. There are stark differences between Greece being part of Eurozone and an independent Scotland being part of Sterling, but it is precisely the wrong time to hope that you’ll get a fair hearing over how a currency union without a political union will work from a particularly risk-averse Scottish public.

A Scottish currency itself wouldn’t be risk free of course, but it sits happily and more persuasively alongside the very notion of Scottish independence and boosts the SNP’s radical credentials at the same time. I mean, picture the Braveheart-esque scene:

Salmond: ‘It’s the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn and now it’s our turn to fight for our freedom!’

Nationalist hordes: “Yeeee-haw. Let’s get intae them!”

Salmond: ‘But we’ll be keeping the British currency…’

Nationalist hordes: ‘Ye whit?’

I just don’t see it myself. Sweden and Norway do perfectly well with their own currencies, and Ireland and Greece clearly wish they’d kept their punts and drachmas. There may be early difficulties in balancing a relatively large debt burden while trying to build up an oil fund, but I can’t imagine an historically strong Scottish economy with great forecasts into the future would attract punitive borrowing costs, despite its small size.

The alternative, sticking tight to Sterling, would see the SNP sleepwalk into a No result, possibly with the awful aftertaste that they never really gave the referendum a right good go.

The other game changer that could see a dramatic increase in support for a Yes result is a referendum on UK involvement in the EU. European integration may yet develop at a dramatic pace over the next couple of years despite a solution to the Eurozone crisis still seemingly a long way off. That solution is surely either political union or everyone back to their national corners (and currencies). A European political superstate with the Eurozone nations at the core would see the UK even more marginalised than it currently is and, with a whopping 83% of grassroots Tories wanting an in/out referendum and UKIP steadily gaining ground in polls, who is to say that that referendum won’t be sooner rather than later.

I wouldn’t want to overstate how pro-European Scotland is, but for us to be outside of the European Union, as an independent country or as part of the UK, is simply unthinkable and surely theoretically a strong reason alone to vote Yes for many Scots.

However, Alex Salmond cannot put up with getting slapped around by Johann Lamont for too much longer and there are too many Nats who believe Sterling is best for Scotland simply because Salmond said so. The rhetoric and waffle needs to be replaced with hard facts and convincing detail, underpinned with ambitions for a truly independent currency. Anything short of that and the SNP will just have to hope for a miracle, or a EU referendum before 2014, whichever is more likely.

Tell you what, nothing fires you up to vote Yes to independence than an actor reading out a transcript from Shcotland’s favourite tax exile.

Ok, that’s it, cynicism out of the way. And anyway, the nation’s media have the cynicism cup running over what with their gritted teeth reporting of today’s Yes Scotland! event, from what I could glean on Twitter today at least. Suggesting a PR-disaster because Prometheus happens to be out with a strapline of ‘the beginning of the end’ or some such had to be one of the lamest takes on today’s proceedings.

The catcalls that this was Scotland’s z-list of celebrities was in equal parts childish and mistaken. Brian Cox, Liz Lochhead, Denis Canavan, Tommy Brennan and Alan Cumming et al all taking to the Cineworld stage and explaining their reasons for declaring their Yes votes is a significant contribution to the independence debate. Sure, today was glitzy and ultimately a bit hollow but as the counter ticks over with real people signing up to this declaration to vote Yes in Autumn 2014, there will at least be a sense of a momentum building towards an end result of Salmond’s choosing. That said, I don’t really follow the First Minister’s logic that one million declared Yes votes will deliver a Yes result at the referendum itself.

I am also concerned that this is very much preaching to the converted. Will any floating voters be turned by today’s events? Probably not, there’s plenty for proponents of independence to be gloomy about given the Yes camp seem stuck on 33% support for independence, according to a poll out today (with a biased question according to James Kelly).

However, today wasn’t about winning over the electorate, there’s plenty of time for that and the undecideds will probably wait till the last few weeks before breaking one way or the other. Today is about making some noise and building a base for the SNP + friends to push on from, creating a team that will knock the doors and make the calls that will outpower the opposition. I’m not at all convinced that an equivalent Yes Britain (or No Scotland?) coalition would yield the same zeal and volunteers as today will, though surely something will have to be cobbled together by Darling and Goldie etc at some point down the line to show a united unionist front. Perhaps the Cameo is a more suitable location for an event with some otherwise incompatible walk on parts? Glibness aside, today isn’t a game changer but it shows what one side is able to do whereas the other side can’t. Yet, at least.

As it is, the SNP, the Greens, the Socialists and quite a few Old Labour personalities make for an interesting alliance at this stage of the referendum campaign. Out-labouring Labour may well remain the SNP’s best chances of success in two years’ time, given the political Tory cross-dressing that Ed Miliband will have to do in order to win the 2015 Westminster election, arguably his highest priority, even over keeping Britain together.

Getting a left wing alliance behind a single declaration is a simple straightforward move that may builder a broader alliance. So what is this declaration:

“I believe that it is fundamentally better for us all if decisions about Scotland’s future are taken by the people who care most about Scotland, that is, by the people of Scotland.

I want a Scotland that speaks with her own voice and makes her own unique contribution to the world – a Scotland that stands alongside the other nations on these isles, as an independent nation.

It’s a bit happy-clappy to be fair. There’s nothing in the above that will lance the potent arguments about the Greek Euro issues directly undermining the SNP’s stance of a currency union with no political union, for example. Furthermore, Scotland is already greener and fairer under devolution and there can be no assurances that we’ll be more prosperous and more successful when independent, given that is simply a leap of faith.

The devil is in the detail but the saving grace is the last line. Seeing Scotland standing alongside other nations on the world stage will, I believe, bring untold benefits to Scotland’s ambitions, its confidence and its collective self esteem, which is why I had no hesitation in signing up to the pledge earlier today.