WHEN I was at high school my main interests revolved around the Old Grey Whistle Test, Sounds magazine and how to avoid being called upon more than once a month in class.
My profile was studiously low and my interest in politics embryonic, to put it politely.
Watching BBC Scotland's The Big Debate: Choosing Scotland's Future on Monday night, I realised how politically unengaged and unsophisticated I was. The questions from this audience of largely 16 and 17-year-olds were to the point and elicited detailed responses: will an independent Scotland have new immigration laws? Will taxes rise? Would Scotland have less international influence if it split from the UK? Aren't some people confusing political independence with a separate cultural identity? Isn't it possible people will just watch Braveheart the night before the referendum and then vote for independence?
They showed a grasp of the intricacies of the independence debate, of issues ranging from university fees to nuclear weapons. They listened intently to the answers from the panel – Willie Rennie, Anas Sarwar, Angela Constance, Patrick Harvie and Professor Tom Devine – and applauded when they thought a panellist got it right.
One of the best questions came from Erin, from Stirling, who said she was for independence, but what would happen if the referendum returned a no vote? Prof Devine, recalling the "deep melancholy throughout the land for five to 10 years" after the 1979 devolution referendum, said he "honestly feared for Scotland after 2014". How would the pro-indy third of the electorate react if the 2014 vote went the other way? The pro-Union parties had at least to have something like devo max in place "otherwise the collective psychology of this nation is going to suffer". A perceptive answer to a perceptive question.
It was an interesting debate, aided by the focused and articulate nature of the questions. Had I been in the audience at that age, I'd have been the one sitting at the back, trying to keep up and, from time to time, surreptitiously glancing at my smuggled-in copy of Sounds magazine. The teenage audience on Monday was engaged and interesting, as good a reminder as any why 16 and 17-year-olds have been given the vote in the ballot two years from now, irrespective of which side of the argument they come down on.
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