Читать книгу The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever - Alex Salmond - Страница 10

Day One: Thursday 12 June

‘Campbellgate’ duly dominates First Minister’s questions and I repel boarders as best as I can. Even for the rough old trade of politics there is something pretty unsavoury about today’s line of questioning. All of the opposition leaders know Campbell and indeed have known him for many years. They all said wonderful things about him when he collected his well-merited lifetime achievement award for journalism earlier this year. They all know that his email has been taken out of context by the Telegraph and that he had nothing whatsoever to do with online abuse. Yet here they all are lining up to present him as the devil incarnate and baying to end his career in an ignominious sacking!

Ruth Davidson even compared him to Donald Dewar’s SPAD John Rafferty, who was sacked in 1999 for allegedly making up death threats against then Labour Health Minister Susan Deacon. I have no intention whatsoever of sacking Campbell. My administration has been grounded on loyalty to colleagues. Even when they make silly mistakes. Leaders who fling people overboard can’t lead.

I call Campbell in at 5 p.m. and administer a formal written warning, only the second one for a SPAD in seven years. The first was for an unfortunate who managed to leave Cabinet papers in a pub. The rules drawn up in the aftermath of the fall of Gordon Brown’s spinner Damian McBride (resigned when caught trying to peddle made-up rumours about the private lives of Tory politicians) are poorly and loosely drafted. This seems the proportionate and fair action to take.

Day Two: Friday 13 June

Today is dominated by the highest YES poll so far – and meeting the real Inspector Rebus.

Launching the reindustrialisation strategy in Dunfermline at Greenfield Systems Ltd, a company which is a main supplier to the Falkirk bus company Alexander Dennis. It’s a pretty good document drawn up by our economics team and the SPAD Ewan Crawford, who has done an excellent job.

Ewan is the son of the late Douglas Crawford, a brilliant and mercurial SNP MP from the 1970s, and Joan Burnie, the doyenne of Scottish agony aunts. This family background may explain Ewan’s permanent hangdog demeanour. He gives the impression of being a melancholy chap in a constant state of anguish about something or other. It may be that he acts like a political sin eater – his worried looks serve to ease the anxiety of everyone else in the team.

At any rate it will be interesting to see how much this substantial document receives in terms of publicity compared with the contrived candy-floss of cyber abuse.

On the way back to Bute House I get the results of our own latest Panelbase poll which has YES up to 48 per cent – the highest in the series. I suggest to Kevin Pringle that the Sunday Herald and the Scottish Sun might be the best release points for a neck-and-neck poll. Rather like the Survation figures, I don’t think we are anything like as close as this poll suggests, but we are certainly in this game.

The artist Gerard Burns comes in with a choice of two portraits of me. I like the one he has set in Bute House, which will be auctioned for charity during the Commonwealth Games. The idea is called 14 for 14 – with 14 prominent Scots as his subjects and all proceeds going to 14 different charities. I choose CLIC Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, which arranges family support and respite and which has a wonderful base in Prestwick, Ayrshire.

Gerard painted The Rowan, the picture which dominates my office in the Scottish Parliament and which has become one of the most famous paintings in the country. I am interviewed in front of it pretty constantly.

In 1998 Gerard was a struggling young artist and schoolteacher who received the commission of his life, the chance to have one of his pictures hung in the new parliament’s temporary home in the General Assembly building on the Mound. He put his heart and soul into the work and painted a group of people carrying a huge saltire set against a Glasgow background. The picture is actually about hope and the rowan sprig in the hand of the beautiful young girl in the picture is a symbol of that hope. They are a family group travelling, perhaps to Hampden for a football match (very hopefully) or perhaps to George Square for a peace rally. Wherever they are going they are travelling hopefully.

All of this potent symbolism was too much for the powers that used to be in the Scottish Parliament, and they sent him a letter saying that they no longer required his very big saltire. Since Gerard binned the letter I cannot positively identify the culprit who believed that the artist’s national flag was too big for the national parliament. Suffice to say, I have my suspicions.

At any rate the world spun on its axis and Gerard ceased to be a struggling young schoolteacher and became one of Scotland’s most successful and most collectable artists. Meanwhile in 2007 I became First Minister and was on the Channel 4 Morning Line programme for the Ayr Gold Cup. Alan Macdonald, the owner of Ayr racecourse and a devotee of both Robert and Gerard Burns, had positioned The Rowan so that the giant saltire was reflected over the racecourse like a great rainbow. Suitably impressed, I asked about the picture and was told the rather sad story about the struggling young artist who had been so cruelly snubbed by the Parliament.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘we can put that to rights as I have just moved into a new office.’ And so it came to pass that Gerard loaned the picture to the government for as long as I was First Minister: a fine and generous gesture, but not a foolish one. One day Gerard will receive back into his possession one of the most famous and sought-after paintings in the country.

I choose the Bute House portrait because the other one, based on a New York Times picture, looks a shade on the messianic side. Gerard kindly offers me the messianic one, but in office I can’t accept personal gifts. I suggest instead that he donates it to the SNP or the YES campaign, where messianic pictures are in great demand!

Later in the evening I have dinner with Ken Stott who, when portraying the detective Rebus, is a most convincing Hibernian supporter. He turns out to be a Heart of Midlothian supporter like myself – so a Jambo as well as a really interesting guy with a great grasp of politics.

‘How do you play Rebus’s Hibee football loyalties with such conviction?’ I ask.

‘It’s called acting!’ says Ken.

Day Three: Saturday 14 June

I’m hoping that the Commonwealth Games will produce some new Scots sporting greats – like my boyhood hero from the 1970 Games, Lachie Stewart. I meet Lachie and a range of other Games greats when we greet the Commonwealth baton at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh.

I am able to tell him exactly where I was when he out-sprinted the great Oz athlete Ron Clarke and the rest of the field to win gold for Scotland. It was a Saturday and I was a ‘junior agent’ (paperboy) for the Edinburgh Evening News. Our ‘senior agent’ (my boss) came to collect the money at my pal Alan Grant’s house. However, we were all watching the 10,000-metre final and he sat down to join us.

‘Have you ever thought of absconding?’ I asked him, nodding towards the cash which lay scattered in small denominations of old money on the Grant living-room carpet.

‘You mean with someone’s wife?’ came the enigmatic reply. Senior agents were not recruited for their extensive vocabulary.

Lachie tells me that in those days you just had to fit in preparation for big meetings as and when you could, but normal life had to come first – in his case his work as a dental technician in Edinburgh. In my boyhood there was a character in the Hotspur comic called Alf Tucker, who was known as ‘the tough of the track’. Alf used to finish working on building sites, eat a quick fish supper and then demolish prima donna athletes (usually very large Germans or very flash Americans) in the big races. Lachie Stewart is the real-life ‘tough of the track’ and all the more admirable for that.

Ron Clarke, in contrast, was a professional in all but name. He said later that he didn’t even know who Lachie was as he sprinted past him. Lachie Stewart is a Scottish hero. Let’s hope for a few more in Glasgow.

The mood at the Commonwealth Stadium is great. Lots of families, lots of saltires and lots of fun.

This is the second time this week I’ve felt a real quickening of the public mood which makes me think that the improved poll position recorded in both Panelbase and Survation may be a bit nearer the mark than the much poorer ratings of System Three, MORI or YouGov. Or alternatively that the nature of the panel polls means that they may be measuring what is likely to happen among the more politically aware rather than what has already happened in the general population.

It’s a day of sport, as I then go to Fir Park, Motherwell, to watch Scotland’s women play Sweden in a World Cup match. I wanted to support the Scotland women but also thought this might be a convenient place to be when asked if I was watching the England–Italy match. Eight years ago my immediate predecessor Jack McConnell made a complete fool of himself by supporting England’s opponents at the World Cup. This has never been my inclination, although I do subscribe to a theory that an extended England run during the tournament would be a big positive for the YES campaign.

Unfortunately, I think there is very little chance at all that the English nation will be led into an overdrive of patriotic fervour. Their team has a dodgy defence and an ageing midfield. The one hope for them lies in their exciting young players, but the pool of talent of first-team, first-rate English players in one of the best leagues in the world is actually small.

The Scotland–Sweden game is great fun and, cheered on by an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 or so, the Scottish women give a better and bigger team a real game. Ifeoma Dieke, the Scottish number 4, is a truly marvellous player – not hugely quick but a fantastic reader of the game, rather in the mould of ex-Hearts, Everton, Rangers and Scotland defender David Weir. I hope I get the chance to meet her one day – with any luck at the World Cup finals in Canada next year.

On my way to Fir Park I’d heard that the ICM poll in Scotland on Sunday has YES at 45, up three points, but, true to their normal dismal form, the well-initialled SOS is leading on the idea that families across the nation are falling out with relatives as a result of the referendum process. What utter piffle.

Most papers (around thirty titles in all in Scotland) are hostile to independence because their predominantly London-based newspaper groups judge it to be in their interests to be hostile. Or at least they consider the idea of independence to be against their interests. However, the Scotsman and its sister paper Scotland on Sunday are on a suicide mission.

Andrew Neil once ran the European newspaper on an anti-European editorial and it did not last too long. Similarly, the Scotsman could survive, indeed prosper, with any editorial line – left-wing, right-wing, Liberal, Seventh Day Adventist, if it wished.

The only thing the Scotsman cannot be is unreliable on the national question, and yet that is exactly what it is. The endgame of that approach is certain. The Scotsman will disappear from the newsstands and on to the internet before long.

Back home in Strichen I arrive in time to see the second half of a pretty average Italian side cantering to a close (but still comfortable) victory over England. As I suspected YES will have to look elsewhere for a campaign boost!

Day Four: Sunday 15 June

Today I get to do what I enjoy most in politics: talking directly to people.

Taking part in the Colin Mackay phone-in for Bauer radio allows me to break out of the political bubble. That kind of contact is one of the real joys of the campaign. There are a number of points raised about the Health Service. I will make sure that the individual cases raised are properly pursued by my private office.

The Sunday Herald and the Scottish Sun on Sunday give us a good show on the apparent tightening of the polls. However, most of the papers do a post-mortem of the week’s episode of cyber abuse as if it was a YES prerogative. Interestingly, in the entire hour of the phone-in programme nobody wants to talk about ‘cybernats’ but about the Health Service and the economy. The lesson for the campaign is to keep on our own agenda and our own medium to deliver the message. We must not allow the old press to dictate the themes of this new campaign.

Day Five: Monday 16 June

Up at the crack of dawn. Destination: Orkney Islands. We have chosen Orkney to launch Our Islands Our Future.

Derek Mackay, the Minister for Local Government, has guided negotiations between the Scottish government and the three island councils* with skill, and the launch goes extremely well. The document and the process which has preceded it is an attempt to galvanise support for independence in the islands by providing the assurance (and the reality) that the process of local decision-making should not stop at Edinburgh but be community-focused across the whole of Scotland. It is important to the independence movement that we carry support in all of Scotland.

Visited Kirkwall Grammar School as part of the trip. It’s a ‘school for the future’ and I am greatly impressed by staff and pupils.

The new schools across Scotland are going to stand the nation in good stead. Actually they are the same design – for example, Kirkwall Grammar looks to my untrained eye very similar in terms of layout to Lasswade High, in Midlothian – and all the better for that. More than 460 new schools have been built or renovated since 2007 (almost a fifth of the entire estate) compared with just 328 during the first eight years of devolution. All of this has been achieved against a huge cut in capital spending and is a triumph of organisation and ingenuity over funding availability.

Day Six: Tuesday 17 June

Worried that Vladimir Putin might cause me problems – but boosted by an Englishman calling for a YES vote.

We were still in Orkney and Donna Heddle, former SNP candidate in Orkney and wife of the council convener, had arranged a lunchtime meeting at virtually no notice – and forty people immediately turn up. A chap, originally from Nottingham, tells me how he and his wife thank their lucky stars every morning for being in Orkney. He is a firm YES supporter but would just like to hear more people with his accent speaking up for the cause.

He is absolutely right!

This came after the first-ever Cabinet meeting convened from a school for the future. The Infant Cremation Commission report from Lord Bonomy was due out. This report follows the discovery that over many years babies’ ashes had been disposed of at Mortonhall Crematorium in Edinburgh without the knowledge of parents. I had promised the parents that I would chair the Cabinet that discussed the report. I was determined to keep my word and therefore I chaired the Cabinet over Skype from Kirkwall Grammar while my colleagues were in Edinburgh. High-tech stuff from a school for the future.

I hope to progress this sensitive issue through building on the excellent work of former Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini. As in everything she does, Elish has adopted a model approach and has earned the confidence of the parents affected by Mortonhall, where this depressing lack of humanity and dereliction of duty were discovered. If we can apply her comprehensive look across all of Scotland then we might implement Bonomy’s recommendations and secure the information, explanation and apology that the parents are due for their own treatment at the hands of officialdom.

This would avoid the long process of a public inquiry which can seldom, if ever, provide a satisfactory explanation for individuals as opposed to key investigations of policy. What public inquiries do provide, however, is a dripping roast for less than scrupulous legal companies.

Now to Putin. Flew back to Edinburgh to hold a meeting with the Ukrainian Community. I’m expecting a difficult discussion, since some had taken severe umbrage at an interview which I had conducted with Alistair Campbell for GQ earlier in the year.

In it Campbell had trapped me into saying what I ‘admired’ about Vladimir Putin. In fact I had been rather judicious in what I said, but that is not how it was reported. At any rate I needn’t have worried. The meeting goes well and we all part firm friends.

Day Seven: Wednesday 18 June

I was only here for the beer. Not drinking it but spreading the word about the exceptional entrepreneurship of a couple of lads from Fraserburgh, James Watt and Martin Dickie, who employ hundreds of people producing and selling great real beers with their firm BrewDog.

They’re giving a presentation at the Scottish Economic Forum and I find out that they have a bar in São Paulo, Brazil.

This is a great way to kick off the forum. Firstly I say it is nice to know that Scotland will be represented at the World Cup in some capacity, and secondly that it is reassuring to know that supporters of every nation – none in particular, mind – will be able to drown their sorrows in excellent beer now brewed in Ellon, Aberdeenshire!

I also raised a laugh by describing my recent visit to the Coca-Cola factory in East Kilbride which was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. One of that plant’s many achievements is to take charge of most of the commemorative bottles that Coca-Cola produce for the World Cup and the Olympic Games. Thanks to Coca-Cola executive Jim Fox they even produced one for Scotland’s Homecoming in 2009, when Robert Burns became the first person in world history to feature on the famous bottle.

In the presence of the company’s top executives I was taken around the impressive plant in a golf buggy by one of the workers, John McCafferty.

As we passed the World Cup bottle line, McCafferty said: ‘As you will know, we in East Kilbride produce the commemorative bottles. You will also know that Scotland, as a nation, decided NOT to participate in this year’s World Cup in Brazil. However, such is our generosity of spirit here in East Kilbride that we still produce the bottles for the rest of the planet.’

One of the Coca-Cola top guys turned to me and asked: ‘Is that right? You guys decided not to go? Was it a protest?’

‘Let’s call it East Kilbride irony,’ I replied.

Day Eight: Thursday 19 June

Everyone’s getting their knickers in a twist about the cost of setting up the governmental structures of an independent Scotland.

Professor Patrick Dunleavy, of the London School of Economics, has been at loggerheads with the Treasury over the past few days after they claimed that it would take £2.7 billion and attributed that figure to his research.

Patrick is not a man to be trifled with or to have his work traduced. He immediately blogged that their figures were ‘bizarrely inaccurate’ and ‘badly misrepresented’ his key data. He accused them of being out by a factor of twelve. The Treasury Permanent Secretary has even admitted to ‘misbriefing’.

Tory leader Ruth Davidson and the Lib Dems’ Willie Rennie pursue me at First Minister’s Questions on these set-up costs. Their joint attack badly misfires when I announce that I have already held a meeting with Professor Dunleavy to discuss his work in detail.

This shouldn’t really have been too much of a surprise to them, since I had mentioned the possibility two weeks previously – at First Minister’s Questions.

Seems like the best way to keep a secret around here is to mention it at FMQs!

Then to Edinburgh’s New Club at the behest of the hugely likeable and totally inveterate right-winger Peter de Vink, who has invited me to address the free-market dining group the Tuesday Club – on a Thursday. Peter is totally convinced that, with enough exposure, I can recruit other free-marketeers to support freedom for their country.

It is an occasion to remember, but not so much for my success in recruiting free-marketeers. Rather a young American singer called Morgan Carberry sings ‘Caledonia’ with Edinburgh Castle as a backdrop through the window of the New Club dining room. ‘Caledonia’ always makes me cry, but Morgan’s story would bring a tear to a glass eye.

She had come to Scotland on a Marshall Scholarship, part of the post-graduation study programme introduced by former First Minister Henry McLeish. She is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire but now is to be flung out of the country because her personal relationship broke up within days of her qualifying for permanent residence. It is difficult to fathom how anyone could conceive that depriving the country of this intelligent and talented young woman could benefit anyone. It is, of course, exactly why we need our own immigration policy for our own country.

Day Nine: Friday 20 June

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, is just about the only public official in London who is playing things with a straight bat.

I have a private phone conversation with him in the middle of a visit to an excellent youth diversionary behaviour project – before heading to the Youth Cabinet.

Mark is a straight down the line sort of guy. I suggest to him that the polls will tighten and that one way to prevent instability in the financial sector is for him to make a ‘Whatever happens, I’m in charge’ type of statement. That would just reflect reality. Whatever the result, the Bank will have that responsibility at least for the next two years. He promises to think about it and I believe he will.

The Youth Cabinet is in the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow and my speech and presentation are starting to catch alight, reflecting the political fires which I think are beginning to burn.

A remark by the late Donnie Stewart, MP for the Western Isles, perhaps reflects best where we are now. He described the political heather as ‘not burning but smouldering’.

The golfers in Aberdeen, the families at Meadowbank, these youngsters in Glasgow. The heather is not yet burning but it is starting to smoulder.

Donnie Stewart once found himself, rather unexpectedly, the leader of a band of eleven MPs in a crucial position in the close-run parliament after the October 1974 election. A Times journalist was dispatched to interview this hick from the sticks and was clearly not pleased to have been given the lowly task.

In his most patronising tone he asked Donnie: ‘And so, Mr Stewart, your outfit seriously believes in independence for Scotland?’

‘Nope,’ says Donnie, puffing on his pipe.

‘Well, Mr Stewart, you do believe in some sort of parliament for Scotland?’

‘Nope,’ says Donnie, still puffing.

‘Ah well, Mr Stewart, you do believe in more SAY for Scotland?’

‘Nope,’ says Donnie, shaking his head.

‘Well,’ says the journalist, by now completely exasperated, ‘what on earth do you believe in, Mr Stewart?’

‘TOTAL WORLD DOMINATION,’ came the majestic put-down from the Isle of Lewis!

After the Youth Cabinet I go off to Nairn to join Moira, since we are snatching a couple of days at Castle Stuart near Inverness. I have made up my mind to try and get a minimum of three escapes to golf courses during the referendum campaign.

This is to keep myself reasonably sane and my weight under some control. I need to try and stick to my 5–2 diet.

Moira is a great sounding board for what’s really going on in the country. She has been telling me since the spring that the race is tightening. Before that she hadn’t said much at all, which I took as a cause for real anxiety.

Moira lunches with ladies in Turriff – at Celebrations, a big concern in the town, where you can buy anything. It’s like an old-fashioned emporium, although certainly not old-fashioned in style, and it acts like a magnet. People come into town for it, and that has knock-on benefits for the rest of the high street.

These ladies are a diverse group – farmers’ wives, nurses, young mums and the like – and they meet for charity fashion shows and so on. And Moira takes the temperature.

We chat about the latest soundings over dinner at the Classroom restaurant in Nairn.

I meet an American party of golfers who are in high form and high jinks having played Nairn Western. One of them tells me that he has been doing his own opinion polling as he goes around the great links courses of Scotland.

According to him everyone in St Andrews is voting NO and everyone in Nairn is voting YES.

He suggests that I should be in St Andrews!

Day Ten: Saturday 21 June

Hundreds of people turn up for the YES Scotland’s Inverness office opening. An incredible crowd given that it was arranged online in a few hours.

I cut the ribbon in the company of the wonderful Julie Fowlis – the singing voice of the Disney movie Brave – and that fine man John Duncanson, the former news anchor of Grampian Television.

Golf calls and we travel to the Castle Stuart links. I play not too badly in tying the game. Round in 88, which for me these days is pretty good. I am now within 29 shots of shooting my age.

A quick drink at Nairn Western golf course, where they were opening their own halfway house – not devo max, but a whisky oasis for those who wish to recover from (or forget entirely) the first nine holes.

On arrival, I hold a conference call to make sure that we are properly equipped to respond to Patrick Dunleavy’s report on the cost of government for the Sunday Post. The call goes well, as I suspect so will the report.

Moira treats me to the Mustard Seed in Inverness, one of her favourite restaurants.

Day Eleven: Sunday 22 June

I’m back on the links today – but it is Patrick Dunleavy who hits a hole in one and bunkers the Treasury.

His report in the Sunday Post has gone well for us and very badly for the UK government. He estimates the initial set-up costs of independence at £200 million – in a different league from the Treasury’s overblown estimates which they had claimed to be based on his research.

Earlier, in the summer sunshine of Castle Stuart, I had listened to the BBC’s new political radio programme anchored by Andrew Wilson and a Labour activist.

Former MSP Andrew is as witty and engaging a political figure as we have in the country, but this format simply will not do. It is not BBC bias this time, just incompetence. It sounds like they have given two minutes’ thought to the format and no training at all to the NO lady. I find myself thinking that it is not fair to her.

Back onto the links where I am playing even better, round in 84 (42–42) with a comprehensive 4 and 3 win. I am now within 25 strokes of shooting my age!

But well as I am playing, the Dunleavy report is playing even better. Back to Strichen on a glorious summer evening.

Day Twelve: Monday 23 June

I’m determined to get the huge tourism potential of the Borders railway line on track.

Staying at the Dryburgh Abbey Hotel because it is near the new Tweedbank Station, the terminus of the Borders railway and the focus of tomorrow’s visit.

It has been difficult to get our officials to fully understand the economic potential of tourist rail.

Given that the economics of the line are challenging, Transport Scotland have been giving themselves a mighty and, to be fair, well-merited pat on the back for keeping it on schedule for opening this coming year. Of course the main line will be crucial for economic development and in commuting terms will be a great success.

The more I study this, the more convinced I am that the new ‘Waverley Line to the Borders’ can become one of the great tourist lines in Europe. The reasoning is clear. There are already highly successful tourist lines in Scotland, such as the West Coast Line, but for most people it takes a day to get there, a day to have a wonderful experience and a day to get back.

What we need is to offer the magic of steam and to offer it, not once every third Sunday, but three times a day in the high season. John Cameron, the ‘silver fox’ – once the greatest sheep farmer in Europe, and now a steam engine enthusiast – has indicated that he could make available The Union of South Africa, one of the great and iconic engines of the age. John has told me, however, that any big steam engine will need a turning circle at the terminus.

In contrast to the West Coast Line, the journey up and down the line to the Borders will take half a day from the busiest railway station in the capital of Scotland. Five million people visit Edinburgh each year. Over 1 million go to Edinburgh Castle. Why shouldn’t at least half of that number head off to the Borders to sample the magic of that beautiful undiscovered part of our country? If the average tourist spends £200 on the retail and cultural offerings down the line then we will generate a visitor boom of £100 million for the Borders.

But I want to see Tweedbank Station for myself to establish if we can have that turning circle. I phone Councillor David Parker, leader of Borders Council, who has the rather good idea of making a permanent home for the Great Tapestry of Scotland – at Tweedbank. It could be a great boost to the Borders Railway.

The Great Tapestry – an all-Scotland community project of weaving – has been wowing the masses as it has toured around Scotland over the last year. One Thursday I arrived at Parliament where the queues were out the door and around the block. I thought they were in a line for First Minister’s Questions. In fact they were there to see the Great Tapestry.

Day Thirteen: Tuesday 24 June

Today is the day I decide to take a stronger hand in the direction of the campaign.

Kick off at the crack of dawn at Tweedbank station with David Parker. We will make his tapestry idea happen in time for an announcement before the purdah* period in August.

We have agreed to abide by purdah in the run-up to the referendum, and so has the UK government, whose record in self-denying ordinances is not a happy one. I am aware that purdah is unenforceable and that they will likely not keep to it. However, Nicola and I have judged that we are better prepared and focused than the UK government and therefore to embrace a purdah period will be more of a nuisance to them than to us.

A mixed-tenure housing development just outside Galashiels is next on the agenda. I’m pleased to see it because I think that the new railway will open up all sorts of possibilities for the Borders – and it’s really important that all of the new housing isn’t just aimed at high-salaried Edinburgh commuters but at ordinary Borders folk.

The Cabinet is held in Selkirk’s lovely Victoria Halls. If you can’t speak there then you can’t speak. The event goes well. The Borders will be the toughest area of Scotland for the YES campaign and I am determined that our dedicated band of Borders campaigners, including my wee sister Gail and my nieces Karen and Christina, will have the maximum support possible.

Then a quick visit to Spark, a challenger electricity company headquartered in Selkirk with 200 people in their facilities centre. They specialise in providing services for tenants, and the fact that they are still running into regulatory trouble for offering tenants lower bills sums up everything that is wrong with the muddle-headed regulation of the electricity markets, which presumably should be aimed at bringing bills down.

On my way through to Kilmarnock, where I am cutting the first turf at the new college, I stop off in Edinburgh to chair the campaign meeting.

The atmosphere is still downbeat, which is pretty infuriating, given that in my best estimation we are doing pretty well. Indeed we could even be doing very well. I decide to take a much stronger hand in the direction of the campaign.

The cross-party YES campaign has had a number of issues in its organisation. In 2012 I chose Blair Jenkins as Chief Executive. He in turn appointed a range of people to lead directorates. Blair, a former head of news at BBC Scotland, had fulfilled an outstanding role in heading up the Scottish government’s broadcasting commission. As lead spokesperson for YES he is performing impressively.

However, getting the disparate organisation to reflect the cohesion of a political party is proving much more problematic. Some things have worked really well, such as the launch of grassroots groups, the public meetings around the country, our social media offerings and the celebrity endorsements arranged by my former Special Adviser Jennifer Dempsie. But inevitably a cross-party YES board has found it difficult, even with great goodwill, to provide coherent strategic direction.

It is that strategic direction – the ability to take decisions on the focus of the campaign and to see them implemented – which wins elections and referendums.

I have therefore moved the decision-making to mimic SNP election organisation. Round the table, apart from Blair and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh from YES, will be Nicola, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, my long-standing press adviser Kevin Pringle, Geoff Aberdein, Stuart Nicolson, the political strategist Stephen Noon, and SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson. These are the battle-hardened group who planned and executed the resounding SNP success in 2011.

I have decided to move the meetings to Thursdays, which make a lot more sense for the campaigning rhythm of the week, and I have asked for proper information on our intelligence from the doorstep and also online, so that the meetings can take strategic decisions based on up-to-date information.

Staying at the Racecourse hotel in Ayr. Over dinner with prominent YES campaigners Marie and Drew Macklin, I recieve the very sad news that David Taylor of UEFA has passed away.

On Saturday I intervened to help David’s family get him into the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, transferred from Turkey, where he had taken ill on holiday.

David was one of the finest administrators that Scotland has ever produced. I had dinner with him in Bute House a couple of months back and he was ready to come out for YES. A great, great loss to the campaign and to Scotland.

Day Fourteen: Wednesday 25 June

Beginning to think this is the campaign I’ve been waiting to fight all of my life. And it’s down to the public I meet around the country – including the lovely crowd today at the ground-breaking of the new Kilmarnock College.

I had agreed to do an interview in front of an audience with former BBC reporter Derek Bateman in pretty relaxed fashion – a sort of Desert Islands Discs without the discs.

But it is the depth of the questioning from the people who have turned up, their perceptions, that really impresses me. Everyone is really getting into this battle.

These are the most informed audiences I have ever spoken to. I had questions lobbed at me such as ‘See on page 26 of the White Paper …’. This is third-degree politics at an advanced level, active citizenship. Whatever happens now we will be dealing with a changed people.

Later it was time to prep for FMQs before a productive dinner with major Scottish entrepreneur (and former Labour MP Mohammad Sarwar’s brother) Mr Mohammad Pervaiz Ramzan, his sons Amaan and Nabeel, and son-in-law Rahan.

These are seriously bright, positive people and totally engaging. What a pleasant contrast with the time-servers and dimwits who occupy the CBI in Scotland, most of whom have never run a business or would even recognise an entrepreneur.

They could play a key role in the campaign and the future of the country. We go to Ondine, one of the best fish restaurants in Scotland, run by celebrity chef Roy Brett. I judge my Muslim friends could use a good feed before the onset of Ramadan.

Day Fifteen: Thursday 26 June

My chiropodist treated my toenails – and gave me some useful insights.

I’ve known Leslie Grant for a long time (he used to look after my mum’s feet too). Leslie chats with his patients and his hill-rambling pals.

Both groups are heavily underrated political communities – perhaps not right up there with taxi drivers, but in a position to have lots of conversations.

Leslie confirms what I suspected: there is movement for YES up in them thar hills, but among his corn-ravaged pensioners of Falkirk things are not looking quite so promising.

FMQs has an end-of-term atmosphere and is generally acknowledged as a good send-off for the troops.

Day Sixteen: Friday 27 June

Meet Morgan Carberry again – and invite her to sing at Edinburgh Castle for the Chinese.

The American Fulbright scholar still faces getting her marching orders from the country.

I have agreed to intervene in her case with the aptly named Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, but have suggested to her that some publicity might help her cause. Indeed it might be the only thing that could help her cause short of immediate independence and a rational immigration policy.

Since it may well be a valedictory performance, she has agreed to sing a song or two for a Chinese investment group organised around the energy giant Petrochina.

The evening goes superbly well and by the end of it memorandums of understanding for £5 billion sterling have been signed and sealed (although it is fair to say that if there is many a slip between cup and lip there is also a difference between signing an MOU and delivering hard investment). Nonetheless a very good night’s work.

Morgan, whose singing in the New Club was beautiful, but who has a big voice for a small room, is in her true element in the Great Hall of the castle and steals the show with an impromptu performance which leaves ne’er a dry ee in the house.

Day Seventeen: Saturday 28 June

A warm reaction for me today – and a cool one for Cameron.

We are both in Stirling for Armed Forces Day, a Gordon Brown notion as part of his reinforcement of Britishness campaign of a few years back. This year, the Tory government, aided and abetted by their Labour allies in Stirling Council, decide to hold it in Stirling on the same weekend as the Bannockburn celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Robert Bruce’s famous victory.

My young advisers (and some of the not so young ones) are very wary of Bannockburn, since they believe it offers the ‘wrong image’ for modern Scottish nationalism. I disagree.

You would have to have a dead soul not to be inspired by the stand taken by Bruce and his army – and foolish indeed not to see the analogies with the current political struggle.

Bruce had first tried to reach an accommodation with Edward Longshanks to become his vassal king and then, when forced into open rebellion, had avoided pitched battle knowing that, castle by castle, town by town, victory would be his and Scotland’s. However, his headstrong younger brother had created a position where the showdown took place on midsummer’s day 1314.

I had tried to reach an accommodation with Cameron, tried to move the Parliament and the country forward, power by power, competence by competence. However, my inability to get traction after the 2011 election on a devo max proposal from enough people and organisations across civic society in Scotland created the circumstances where a showdown would take place on 18 September 2014.

Like Bruce, we are engaged with a force of awesome power. Like Bruce, we are faced with a pitched battle not completely of our choosing, and like Bruce, we have to gamble to win the day.

In any event, on Armed Forces Day the UK government’s best-laid schemes gang agley. Cameron’s all too blatant attempts to play politics rebound pretty badly.

Although the military crowd reaction is not unanimously favourable towards me it is still positive: indeed warm. The reaction to Cameron is decidedly cool.

Why should it not be, since they are predominantly a crowd of working-class Scottish families on a day out and Cameron is a Tory toff on a day trip?

Meanwhile at Bannockburn, where the organisation is struggling with the surge of the great crowd which has turned up, the reaction towards me is both unanimous and hugely favourable.

Dougie McLean in concert tops the day off nicely.

Day Eighteen: Sunday 29 June

Great reception on my home turf when Moira drags me down to a local garden centre.

We just got back home in the very wee sma’ hours.

The Sunday Herald has run a very nice piece on Morgan, with a superb photograph that well depicts this vibrant and talented woman who is about to be kicked out of our country. If a picture tells a thousand words then this picture summarises what is wrong with the lunatic UK immigration policy.

To one of Moira’s favourite garden centres, White Lodge, near Turriff, where she has decided to invest more funds in her favourite hobby. It is not often that I have any time to spend on her interests, so I take it all in good part, even when we manage to drop the car keys in one of the plant carts and spend half an hour or more looking for them!

Again I am interested in the crowd reaction, which is according me rock-star status. Elvis Presley’s ancestors came from nearby Lonmay and the Commonwealth Games baton has been touring locally, but by and large Turriff is not normally known for flashmob events like today. Especially at the garden centre.

I have always been popular in my own area and particularly in Turriff. There is however a degree of evidence piling up – for example, Kilmarnock College, Armed Forces Day – where crowd reaction tells me that something is on the move.

Whatever is happening it is not being fully recorded in most polls which, after moving in our favour, have broadly stabilised. That does not make the change unreal, just unrecorded or still to come.

Day Nineteen: Monday 30 June

Back to Bute House for Royal Week. I’ve tracked down one of my old professors for help with some historical rough justice.

I’ve asked Bruce Lenman for a quick opinion on the Appin trial. There is a petition before the Parliament – from a Campbell no less – asking for a Royal pardon for James Stewart.

Devotees of Robert Louis Stevenson will recall that Alan Breck Stuart (who bore a king’s name) may or may not have shot the Red Fox at Appin. What did happen for certain in historical terms is that his stepfather James Stuart was strung up by a majority Campbell jury with a Chief of the Clan Campbell on the bench just to make sure that there was no mistake.

Cases such as this are usually turned down, for fear of opening a can of worms and setting a difficult precedent. However, I have decided to make a check or two with Frank Mulholland, the astute Lord Advocate, before we decide on this one.

It is not often in life that you get the chance to right what seems a clear historical wrong. Hence I have asked my old history prof for an informed opinion.

On the subject of history, the Scotsman seems grievously disappointed that the Bannockburn event was sold out and decided that the key story was the queues to get in.