13 September 2015: Tom Gordon, Scottish Political Editor of the Sunday Herald – The Willie Rennie Interview
Listening to Willie Rennie recall the Better Together campaign is like eavesdropping on a therapy session as he wrestles with a half-buried trauma.
The misery simply pours out of him. The No side was “shambolic in its development”, groans the Scottish LibDem leader, its output “dark”, its operations “secretive”, people’s confidence was “crushed” by a lack of information.
Yes, they won in the end, but how they won “didn’t make us feel very good about it”.
And as for the aftermath, David Cameron was “despicable,” he spits. “He did more damage in the general election campaign to the Union than the SNP had done for years.”
So not a barrel of laughs, then. Indeed, while the Yes side now boasts thousands of upbeat losers, Rennie seems the embodiment of that other Scottish tribe, the joyless Unionist victor.
His lowest ebb came on September 7, when a Sunday Times YouGov poll put Yes side ahead for the first time, on 51 per cent – a month earlier No had been 22 points in front.
Rennie, Tory leader Ruth Davidson and Labour’s Johann Lamont had a conference call that afternoon.
The two women were relatively optimistic, but Rennie saw disaster at hand.
“Ruth was very firm. She said we’ll win 55-45 and she was right.
But I don’t think it was 55-45 at that stage. I was in a very dark place. My feeling was that things had moved away from us, and we’d been behind for not just one poll, but for 10 days.
Full article: https://scottishpol.blogspot.com/
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