Ian Blackford was asked on the radio at the weekend if he’d ever told a lie and he seemed to be struggling to admit it. Allow me to help. We all lie, including members of the SNP, who in the last few days have come out with some real whoppers about pensions. All we want here is a bit of honesty, but instead we get an un-truth. Instead, we are ambushed by a porky pie.

The reason Mr Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminster, was asked about lying was that he’d been ejected from the Commons for saying, truthfully, that the Prime Minister does not always tell the truth. Mr Blackford said he supports a change in the rules, which dictate you can lie in the Commons and that’s fine, but if you accuse the liar of lying you’ll be kicked out. Such a rule may have been OK as a way of preventing gentlemen engaging in duels in the 17th century but it’s long past its sell-by date and needs to go.

However, the responsibility to be honest goes way beyond the Commons and is particularly important in the debate about the Union. Asked about pensions in an independent Scotland, Mr Blackford said the UK government would have an obligation to finance the pensions of everyone who’d paid national insurance. “You pay into a national insurance fund,” he said, “and the UK is responsible for the disbursement of that – no ifs, no buts.”

Now, in the words of Theresa May, either Mr Blackford hasn’t read the rules on pensions or doesn’t understand what they mean or he thinks they don’t apply to him – which is it? As economists David Eiser and David Bell made clear in this newspaper, the state pension isn’t paid from a pot that people build up over their working lives, it’s a state benefit that a government can change, reduce or even, in theory, eliminate altogether.

In claiming the opposite – that the UK Government would have an obligation to keep on paying the pensions – Mr Blackford is asking us to believe something really quite extraordinary: that if independence happens, Scotland’s pensions would be paid for by a foreign government. His boss Nicola Sturgeon is also asking us to believe that any doubts we may have about this issue will be resolved in time for another referendum next year. Just to be clear: I do not believe her.

For me – and many people who voted No last time – the issue of pensions and what’s said about them also goes right to the heart of why most of us will probably vote No again next time. On a personal note, I had a meeting with my pension guy the other day and there’s a chance that the plan we’ve made for the next 10-15 years could be affected, damaged or, as the First Minister would have it, improved by Scotland going independent. Basically, independence introduces more uncertainty and risk into my financial future and the financial future of lots of other people and it is this uncertainty that will be critical to any future referendum.

You can see the effect the uncertainty has by looking at previous referendums. In places that hold them all the time – California for example – the evidence is that voters are much more likely to back the status quo rather than change. We also saw the same effect in our own referendum in 2014 – the final opinion polls put Yes at a much higher level than it finally achieved which suggests undecided voters are disproportionately likely to reject change (and therefore risk) and stick with what they know. It amounts to a built-in bias towards the status quo.

Lots of other factors come into play of course – how Scottish you feel for example or which party you vote for – and the status-quo bias is not always guaranteed to deliver the result you would expect (in the case of Brexit for example). However, the attitudes that voters have to risk and change is especially important in referendums because there’s usually something pretty important at stake; the risk is likely to be high and the change is likely to be great and this is certainly true of the referendum on independence that will allegedly happen next year.

The problem for Ms Sturgeon and Mr Blackford with all of this is that not only will there be a status-quo bias in any future referendum, it will be particularly strong in a well-off country like ours at a time when economic pressure is already increasing. Of course, there are Scots who are more tolerant of risk but they tend to be voters who have less to lose in an economically risky situation, which is why Yes votes are always higher in areas that are more deprived. Unfortunately for the SNP, there aren’t enough voters in this category – the ones less likely to worry about change – to get them over the finish line.

The leaders of the SNP know all of this is true, which may be why Mr Blackford has been saying what he has about pensions. The SNP realises people who are less tolerant of risk and uncertainty (on pensions or anything else) are less likely to vote for independence, and so the SNP try to introduce as much certainty as they can – hence: “don’t worry about your pensions, the UK Government is going to pay for them”. The theory behind it all is that risk-averse voters will then vote for change. And without those voters, the SNP is much less likely to win a referendum.

What the SNP leadership needs to ask itself, however, is whether remarks like the ones Mr Blackford has been making about pensions actually help or hinder the cause. The Brexit vote in 2016 proved that people will sometimes vote for change and risk and may even vote against their own economic interests. But the SNP needs to consider how they can best replicate such a result in Scotland. What tactic is going to work?

In the end, it may come down to focusing on factors other than the voters’ attitude to risk, such as a nationalistic feeling of Scottishness, or even their opinion of Nicola Sturgeon. But, like it or not, it could also come down to the SNP offering reassurance to voters who are worried about change and let me tell you: an apparent recklessness about the truth on pensions is not reassuring. Despite what you say Mr Blackford, I am still worried about my pension. I am still concerned about change. I am still likely to vote No.

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