Brexiteers remind me of Scottish nationalists—and not in a good way

Flashbacks are said to be a reaction to stress. So I must have been more stressed during the Scottish referendum campaign than I had realised. Today, I keep hearing the cadences of Alex Salmond in the utterances of Chris Grayling and Michael Gove. The similarities are instructive as well as disconcerting.

The European debate had barely been initiated when Chris Grayling used the S-word. The EU referendum was all about wresting back sovereignty from Brussels. For Scottish Nationalists too, it was all about sovereignty. Both ignore the paradox at the heart of their statements: the fact the people are making this choice is an exercise of sovereignty. If Britain can choose whether to leave or remain, it must be sovereign. If the Scottish people can choose whether to be independent of not, they must be sovereign too. In both cases the fact that you can ask the question answers it.

Sovereignty is the slippiest of concepts. For some in the leave camp, the sovereignty to be recovered is the Westminster Parliament’s. In truth, Parliamentary sovereignty is merely a legal "rule of recognition"—laws properly passed in Parliament are recognised by UK courts, so a Westminster Act repealing the European Communities Act of 1972 would duly be put into practice by the UK courts. This kind of sovereignty has never been lost.

In truth, assertions of sovereignty are simply a reasonably polite way of expressing resentment about interference by foreigners, who might not have our interests at heart. Perhaps the SNP’s most successful argument was that independence would mean that decisions about Scotland would be taken by people who were concerned only about Scotland. They at least avoided adding explicitly “and not by the English”, though frequent pejorative references to “Westminster” were intended to have precisely that effect. Brexiteers are blunter: they want “Brussels” to stop interfering in British lives.

When pressed, both sets of secessionists acknowledge that there will be need to be cooperation afterwards. Implausibly, both argue cooperation would be better once union had been ended. This isn't just wishful thinking, it's rhetorically useful—anyone who suggests that other states might pursue their own interests, not ours, after a vote to leave can then be painted as aligned with foreigners. Not sufficiently Scottish, or not British enough and, like foreigners, not to be trusted. The appeal to patriotism is the first resort of the separatist.

No one likes to be called negative, and people like to say yes if they can. This matters for framing the referendum question. The SNP built an entire campaign on “Yes" meaning independence, but Mr Cameron was unable to persuade the Electoral Commission to have “Yes” mean remain. (Somehow the Commission managed to rationalise away this contradiction.) The opponents of change, as proponents of No, start with something of a disadvantage. If they criticise change, they are being negative. If they point to risks, they are "project fear".

This has more than simply rhetorical consequences. It licenses the advocates of change to make more sweeping claims about its benefits, as the same response works for both modest and immodest assertions. The disadvantages of the status quo will be concrete and evident. The changed world by contrast can be pretty much anything the voter wants. Scottish independence was going to produce a dynamic economy with the taxes of Luxembourg and the welfare state of Sweden. So far, Brexiteers have spotted you can respond to virtually any criticism with a charge of fear-mongering. So to suggest that, say, the EU might not agree to free trade on Michael Gove's terms is to do with work of project fear. Treasury economic analysis is not engaged with but dismissed. The parallels with Alex Salmond's fantasy economics are exact.

This dovetails nicely with the patriotism argument. To suggest that the UK might not thrive outside the EU—say, that it might take a long time to refocus the economy from European to other trade, or that its security would be weakened by reduced cooperation—is to “talk down” your own country. This was a staple of the Scottish referendum: to suggest that Scotland would not do better if independent was to describe it as "too wee, too, too stupid” to be independent. I had thought the Leave Campaign hadn’t quite got there yet, but just this week they accused the government of “losing faith in Britain”.

The reality is the risks of leaving mirror the advantages of staying. The challenge for the Remain campaign is to find language which presents that positively. It is the language of greater opportunity, rather than loss, increasing security rather than risk. In a doomed effort to bind his party together, the Prime Minister seemed in recent years to accept so much of the characterisation of the EU but party unity has gone: and the Conservative Leavers have gone full-on shrill. "I realise the EU is not perfect, but..." is Cameron beginning the argument his opponents’ territory.

Perhaps it isn't surprising that economic issues dominate the EU referendum, just as they dominated the Scottish. After all we are still emerging from the longest recession in living memory, and much of the unfocused dissatisfaction with politics is a reaction to stalled living standards. One very distinct parallel in the two campaigns is the arrival of a doorstop of economic analysis from the Treasury. This is to be welcomed, but it's hard to imagine it will be much read. One can no doubt quibble about the numbers and the modelling, and the jibe that the Treasury can’t forecast next year, never mind the next 30 will hurt the more for having a grain of truth to it.

There's one unavoidable truth, however: borders get in the way of trade. It suits those who want to create or strengthen borders to deny this. But economists since David Ricardo and Adam Smith have been right about it. Certainly for developed economies, free trade promotes the welfare of everyone, and borders—physical, fiscal, or administrative—impede trade. That's why countries worldwide invest time, effort and political capital creating free-trade areas. There is one nice symmetry in the UK and Scottish cases. Trade is the big economic issue in the EU referendum. Currency was the big one in Scotland. People instinctively grasp the free-trade point, so Michael Gove airily asserts that the UK will remain part of a free-trade zone from Iceland to Belarus. In the Scottish referendum, voters instinctively grasped the benefit of a shared UK currency, so Salmond glibly asserted it would remain. Obviously, to question either proposition is to be in thrall to project fear. But neither proposition is true.

So Remainers need to plug away at the facts. But they also need to remember that, as with Scottish independence, this is more than just an economic issue. It's an issue about peace and security, freedom of movement for education or retirement as well as employment, and common social standards.

The parallels between the leave campaign and the SNP are ironic as well as instructive; Conservative ministers who brushed aside the SNP's arguments now use them shamelessly: they think they might work. It's also easy to see two different nationalisms at work. Scottish nationalism has been out of the closet for years and defines England, or London, as the other. English nationalism is still not quite able to speak its name (if it could, would it be “UKIP”?) but defines the other as Europe, or Brussels. But there is a deeper similarity in these campaigns.

Scotland has always had its nationalists, and England its anti-Europeans. Today, however, these movements have purchase and wider support for the same reasons that Italy elects a comedian, France faces neofascist populists, and America toys with Donald Trump. Populations are economically dissatisfied and politically alienated. Simple solutions start to look attractive, especially to those who think they have the least to lose. The leap in support for the SNP was from former Labour voters in the less-well off areas:the poorest parts of the country voted Yes. The same pattern is evident in the EU referendum, with the added element that leavers include many people who feel immigrants directly threaten their economic position.

This cannot be fixed between now and 23 June. The EU referendum has to be argued on its merits, not its causes. The British population has to be persuaded, once again, of the arguments for both autonomy and solidarity: for self-rule and shared sovereignty at the same time. In the end, a majority of Scots were persuaded of this in 2014. There is a positive political, economic and social case to be made for the European Union, just as there are risks to be identified and fantasies to be exploded.

One of the lessons of the Scottish referendum, however, is that divisive processes can have lasting consequences. The effects on political parties are fascinating but not what matter most. Unless Britain finds a way to deal with the underlying causes—to persuade more of the population that they have a worthwhile stake in society, and that we are indeed all "in it together," the divisions caused by these two referendums will be with us for a long time to come.