Today is dominated by the highest YES poll so far – and meeting the real Inspector Rebus.
Launching the reindustrialisation strategy in Dunfermline at Greenfield Systems Ltd, a company which is a main supplier to the Falkirk bus company Alexander Dennis. It’s a pretty good document drawn up by our economics team and the SPAD Ewan Crawford, who has done an excellent job.
Ewan is the son of the late Douglas Crawford, a brilliant and mercurial SNP MP from the 1970s, and Joan Burnie, the doyenne of Scottish agony aunts. This family background may explain Ewan’s permanent hangdog demeanour. He gives the impression of being a melancholy chap in a constant state of anguish about something or other. It may be that he acts like a political sin eater – his worried looks serve to ease the anxiety of everyone else in the team.
At any rate it will be interesting to see how much this substantial document receives in terms of publicity compared with the contrived candy-floss of cyber abuse.
On the way back to Bute House I get the results of our own latest Panelbase poll which has YES up to 48 per cent – the highest in the series. I suggest to Kevin Pringle that the Sunday Herald and the Scottish Sun might be the best release points for a neck-and-neck poll. Rather like the Survation figures, I don’t think we are anything like as close as this poll suggests, but we are certainly in this game.
The artist Gerard Burns comes in with a choice of two portraits of me. I like the one he has set in Bute House, which will be auctioned for charity during the Commonwealth Games. The idea is called 14 for 14 – with 14 prominent Scots as his subjects and all proceeds going to 14 different charities. I choose CLIC Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, which arranges family support and respite and which has a wonderful base in Prestwick, Ayrshire.
Gerard painted The Rowan, the picture which dominates my office in the Scottish Parliament and which has become one of the most famous paintings in the country. I am interviewed in front of it pretty constantly.
In 1998 Gerard was a struggling young artist and schoolteacher who received the commission of his life, the chance to have one of his pictures hung in the new parliament’s temporary home in the General Assembly building on the Mound. He put his heart and soul into the work and painted a group of people carrying a huge saltire set against a Glasgow background. The picture is actually about hope and the rowan sprig in the hand of the beautiful young girl in the picture is a symbol of that hope. They are a family group travelling, perhaps to Hampden for a football match (very hopefully) or perhaps to George Square for a peace rally. Wherever they are going they are travelling hopefully.
All of this potent symbolism was too much for the powers that used to be in the Scottish Parliament, and they sent him a letter saying that they no longer required his very big saltire. Since Gerard binned the letter I cannot positively identify the culprit who believed that the artist’s national flag was too big for the national parliament. Suffice to say, I have my suspicions.
At any rate the world spun on its axis and Gerard ceased to be a struggling young schoolteacher and became one of Scotland’s most successful and most collectable artists. Meanwhile in 2007 I became First Minister and was on the Channel 4 Morning Line programme for the Ayr Gold Cup. Alan Macdonald, the owner of Ayr racecourse and a devotee of both Robert and Gerard Burns, had positioned The Rowan so that the giant saltire was reflected over the racecourse like a great rainbow. Suitably impressed, I asked about the picture and was told the rather sad story about the struggling young artist who had been so cruelly snubbed by the Parliament.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we can put that to rights as I have just moved into a new office.’ And so it came to pass that Gerard loaned the picture to the government for as long as I was First Minister: a fine and generous gesture, but not a foolish one. One day Gerard will receive back into his possession one of the most famous and sought-after paintings in the country.
I choose the Bute House portrait because the other one, based on a New York Times picture, looks a shade on the messianic side. Gerard kindly offers me the messianic one, but in office I can’t accept personal gifts. I suggest instead that he donates it to the SNP or the YES campaign, where messianic pictures are in great demand!
Later in the evening I have dinner with Ken Stott who, when portraying the detective Rebus, is a most convincing Hibernian supporter. He turns out to be a Heart of Midlothian supporter like myself – so a Jambo as well as a really interesting guy with a great grasp of politics.
‘How do you play Rebus’s Hibee football loyalties with such conviction?’ I ask.
‘It’s called acting!’ says Ken.
Day Three: Saturday 14 June
I’m hoping that the Commonwealth Games will produce some new Scots sporting greats – like my boyhood hero from the 1970 Games, Lachie Stewart. I meet Lachie and a range of other Games greats when we greet the Commonwealth baton at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh.
I am able to tell him exactly where I was when he out-sprinted the great Oz athlete Ron Clarke and the rest of the field to win gold for Scotland. It was a Saturday and I was a ‘junior agent’ (paperboy) for the Edinburgh Evening News. Our ‘senior agent’ (my boss) came to collect the money at my pal Alan Grant’s house. However, we were all watching the 10,000-metre final and he sat down to join us.
‘Have you ever thought of absconding?’ I asked him, nodding towards the cash which lay scattered in small denominations of old money on the Grant living-room carpet.
‘You mean with someone’s wife?’ came the enigmatic reply. Senior agents were not recruited for their extensive vocabulary.
Lachie tells me that in those days you just had to fit in preparation for big meetings as and when you could, but normal life had to come first – in his case his work as a dental technician in Edinburgh. In my boyhood there was a character in the Hotspur comic called Alf Tucker, who was known as ‘the tough of the track’. Alf used to finish working on building sites, eat a quick fish supper and then demolish prima donna athletes (usually very large Germans or very flash Americans) in the big races. Lachie Stewart is the real-life ‘tough of the track’ and all the more admirable for that.
Ron Clarke, in contrast, was a professional in all but name. He said later that he didn’t even know who Lachie was as he sprinted past him. Lachie Stewart is a Scottish hero. Let’s hope for a few more in Glasgow.
The mood at the Commonwealth Stadium is great. Lots of families, lots of saltires and lots of fun.
This is the second time this week I’ve felt a real quickening of the public mood which makes me think that the improved poll position recorded in both Panelbase and Survation may be a bit nearer the mark than the much poorer ratings of System Three, MORI or YouGov. Or alternatively that the nature of the panel polls means that they may be measuring what is likely to happen among the more politically aware rather than what has already happened in the general population.
It’s a day of sport, as I then go to Fir Park, Motherwell, to watch Scotland’s women play Sweden in a World Cup match. I wanted to support the Scotland women but also thought this might be a convenient place to be when asked if I was watching the England–Italy match. Eight years ago my immediate predecessor Jack McConnell made a complete fool of himself by supporting England’s opponents at the World Cup. This has never been my inclination, although I do subscribe to a theory that an extended England run during the tournament would be a big positive for the YES campaign.
Unfortunately, I think there is very little chance at all that the English nation will be led into an overdrive of patriotic fervour. Their team has a dodgy defence and an ageing midfield. The one hope for them lies in their exciting young players, but the pool of talent of first-team, first-rate English players in one of the best leagues in the world is actually small.
The Scotland–Sweden game is great fun and, cheered on by an enthusiastic crowd of 2,000 or so, the Scottish women give a better and bigger team a real game. Ifeoma Dieke, the Scottish number 4, is a truly marvellous player – not hugely quick but a fantastic reader of the game, rather in the mould of