NOT long after I started working for Ruth Davidson, a senior Conservative who shall remain nameless asked me despairingly “What can we do to get the press to stop calling us Tories?”
I was stumped for an answer because I’d never considered “Tory” to be a term of abuse but then again neither did I take offence when referred to as a Hun by my Celtic-minded chums. (I have a spoof front page, a popular leaving present for journalists, with a mock advert for “The Hun who has fun”.) I explained that most folk wouldn’t regard Tory as pejorative and in any case when it came to headline writing it would be hard to insist a 12-letter word should always replace four letters.
Similarly, I never thought there was much harm in calling independence supporters Nats, but over the years it became clearer that more than a few Nats didn’t like it; the headline argument certainly wouldn’t wash when SNP worked fine in a single column. The Nationalist need for mildly insulting shorthand for all Unionists eventually produced “Yoon” , which was quite clever even if it did take a little bit of working out. And this week its place in the lexicon of Scottish politics was finally cemented by ex-First Minister Alex Salmond who referred to the “Yoon Media” to denigrate the Tory (sorry) supporting Daily Telegraph.
I don’t recall Yoon being in particularly wide circulation in the run-up to the 2014 referendum, beyond a few of the more extreme social media commentators, but if there is to be another reckoning Mr Salmond has done his bit to ensure it’s in the front line of the verbal trench warfare which will almost certainly ensue. And from what I’m seeing and hearing the battle lines of division are already dug and revetted.
Some commentators, such as writer Val McDermid on Question Time last week, have been keen to perpetuate the belief that because the last referendum was apparently a wonderful celebration of political engagement the next one will be another fiesta.
It is true there was no violence last time, but only a master of fiction such as Ms McDermid could come up with the claim, without a shred of evidence, that the media were responsible for “whipping up a frenzy of hatred and anger”. Mr Salmond’s Trump-esque populist hyperbole is nothing new, but when respected novelists back up assertions that views differing from Nationalist orthodoxy are the products of a “Yoon Media” conspiracy then we really are entering dangerous territory.
Fears that a second independence referendum will be much more bitterly fought than the last one should not be lightly dismissed. The stakes are far, far higher and this time the starting point is the fever pitch which was only really reached in the last month of the 2014 campaign.
Nationalists know a second defeat now will genuinely kill the dream for a generation at least and there will be no Brexit 2 wildcard to move the goalposts. Unionists know the end of the UK is only six polling points away and the £15bn black hole is no myth. You can sense it on the doorsteps. Anger is everywhere; anger at the First Minister for the constant threat of a second independence referendum and anger at the Conservatives for, well for being Conservatives. But there is also anger from more than a few purist independence supporters that having just voted to get out of the EU, Ms Sturgeon wants to take them straight back in again. Only Labour is spared anger, but its fate is worse; pity.
None of this is a “Yoon Media” conspiracy because I’m on the receiving end of it every night: a door will be shut in my face while next door it’s the warmest of welcomes. And this is just the run-up to a council election. Yet Ms McDermid would have us believe Scotland came back together in perfect harmonee. We ain’t seen nothing yet.
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