Gordon Brown: I was always against Project Fear
The former prime minister refers to the ‘ludicrous nature’ of the Better Together campaign in a new book
Gordon Brown has told a new biography he was always against the "Project Fear" tactics used by the Better Together campaign during the independence referendum.
The former prime minister is widely held to have played a key role in helping to secure a No vote in 2014.
However, he has blamed the cross-party Better Together campaign for Labour's subsequent collapse in Scotland.
He told a new book: "I was always against Project Fear. You cannot say to Scottish people, you’re too poor or too weak or too stupid to be independent."
Gordon Brown: Power with Purpose by James Macintyre will be published by Bloomsbury on February 12. It lays bare Mr Brown’s frustration with what he still calls “the ludicrous nature of the Better Together campaign”.
Mr Macintyre writes: “Brown, who spoke at nearly a hundred rallies across Scotland, had wanted a distinct Labour pro-union campaign, and had privately asked David Cameron and [then Chancellor] George Osborne for half the ‘No’ funds to go to Labour for that purpose. The Tories had refused.”
He adds: “Osborne had stuck to the cynical and dry economic arguments based on keeping the pound sterling, insisting that Scots would be worse off on the outside. The lack of inspiring politics in the campaign had been part of what had frustrated Brown.”
Mr Brown pushed the case for greater devolution in the event of a No vote, and was a key architect of ‘the vow’ promising more powers for Holyrood, which was splashed on the front page of the Daily Record on September 14.
His speech at Maryhill Community Centre in Glasgow on the eve of the referendum is widely seen as one of the best of the campaign. “The whole point was to make the Scottish people feel proud to vote ‘No’,” Mr Brown recalls in the new book.
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Mr Macintyre writes: “The speech was widely accepted even by Conservatives to be one of the best any modern politician has given.
“As his fellow Scot but Tory opponent Michael Gove acknowledges: ‘I think the single best speech, and the single most inspiring moment in the whole campaign, was the speech he gave in the final week in Glasgow. I still, from time to time, watch it on YouTube. And I marvel. It was quite brilliant, and I didn’t think anyone else could have done it in that way or with such effect, because in crude terms, the Yes side had the better of the emotional arguments and the Better Together side the better intellectual arguments. But that was the moment when the speech touched people’s emotions most effectively of any speech or any intervention in the campaign. And I didn’t think anyone else could have done it as effectively as he did.’”
The new biography tells of Mr Brown’s “fury” when David Cameron called for ‘English votes for English laws’ the day after the referendum. Condemning the move as “disastrous” and “sectarian”, he asked to speak to the then prime minister, who declined the call.
The book notes Mr Brown “still blames the cross-party Better Together campaign for Labour’s collapse in Scotland”.
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