THE campaign to keep Britain in the EU should emulate Better Together’s successful bid to keep Scotland in the UK by matching rational economic argument with passion and patriotism, according to former Labour Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander.
The politician-turned-academic, in a speech at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London, insisted “psychology matters more than psephology” and - as his former Cabinet colleague Gordon Brown made his first major intervention in the In-Out campaign this week - stressed there would be "great premium on people, who can find their voice in the closing stages of this campaign and match the weight of evidence with the weight of emotion".
The former Prime Minister was regarded by many as playing a pivotal role in the final days of the Scottish campaign with his tub-thumping oratory.
Mr Alexander, a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School and a Visiting Professor at King's College, London, who also advises rock star Bono on development in Africa, drew on the experience of the Scottish campaign to suggest the best way forward for the Remain camp, which he supports.
The former MP, who lost his Paisley and Renfrewshire South seat in the SNP landslide of last year, noted how the polls on the EU debate were very but stressed: “That kind of horse-race number doesn’t really matter; ultimately, what matters is the psychology not the psephology.”
He explained the question people should be asking themselves was - what would be the defining question in voters’ minds on the evening of June 22.
“It is with some proud that I would say in the closing stages of the Scottish referendum campaign those of us arguing for Scotland’s place within the UK did not lose a news cycle in the last 10 days.
“Goodness knows the polls were tight but if you watched the Scottish media…we were defining and establishing a frame with which we started the campaign 18 months previously. That was essentially a choice between the best of both worlds with staying part of the UK or all the risks, uncertainty and costs of separation.”
Read more: Europhiles can learn from Better Together, says Lord Robertson
He spoke of the “grammar” of a campaign, noting how he had used the message in the Scottish referendum that he wanted to see progress; “faster, safer, better, change represented by a No vote”.
Mr Alexander, who served as shadow foreign secretary in the last parliament, explained: “Unless you began with an easy, comfortable assertion of Scottish patriotism, people simply were not prepared to listen to you; they would switch off before you began. In that sense beginning with an assertion of your own pride and confidence in Scotland was vital and important.”
The former Europe minister claimed the current EU campaign was a classic electoral battle between Stronger In, confident in making the arguments about the economy, and Vote Leave, wanting to focus on immigration and identity; a contest between cost and control.
He stressed how emotion mattered just as much as evidence in the latter stages of any referendum when the campaign had to become a movement, spurred on in this day and age by social media.
“That is partly the lesson of the power and impact of Gordon Brown’s speech just a couple of days before polling day in 2014. That wasn’t by chance or coincidence.”
He explained how he had studied the Quebec referendums of 1980 and 1995 when the respective premiers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien made “extraordinarily powerful eve-of-poll speeches”.
The Scot confided that in the 2014 campaign he felt it was like trying to steer a small dinghy into harbour on raging seas unable to control the powerful forces of belonging, identity and anger against politics.
“Therefore,” he added, “the stakes are extraordinarily high in the remaining weeks of the campaign to make sure Britain makes the right choice when we come to cast our votes on June 23.”
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