Beyond ‘Project Fear’

One worrying aspect of the EU Referendum process is the way in which lessons from the Scottish Independence Referendum process are being used. Because the majority in Scotland voted No to independence, it is assumed that the No campaign was a success. And, because that campaign was dubbed Project Fear, it is argued that an EU campaign that frightens people into voting to remain, or to leave, will succeed. I would challenge both points.

For a start, many people in Scotland voted No despite the campaign, not because of it. The campaign steadily lost support throughout the referendum process. At the start, a secure 75% of the population rejected independence; by the end of it, only 55% did so. That is not the mark of a successful No campaign. That is not a campaign whose strategies should be copied.

But was fear one of its strategies? Were people frightened into voting No? Or did they make a choice based on economic projections that they trusted? Or were they unconvinced by the arguments for independence? All three were elements in people’s decisions, but it is the first of these possibilities that gave the Yes supporters comfort and it was they who coined the description Project Fear. It was meant to be a put-down, and was heard as such.

A political campaign that trades on people’s fear and whips it up is an unstable basis for the community’s future. Antagonisms that are based on strong emotion may well outlast the campaign and be more resistant to correction than balanced predictions. The same thing goes, of course, for wildly optimistic visions of the future. Project Fear is not defensible.

But you cannot remove fear and hope from an election or a referendum. These are natural human reactions to considering the future. Many people in this country are fearful about tomorrow, let alone what might happen months or years away. Now, as Christians, we believe that we face the future in faith, trusting in God’s goodness. We can dismiss other people’s fears too lightly. But it’s not just our own future that we’re considering. Loving our neighbour entails that we assess carefully how our decisions might impact on others and that requires us to take seriously the predictions that are available to us.

Drawing a line between predicting a negative outcome and scaring the electorate is difficult, all the more so given that predicting the future is an inexact science. But it is important that it should be done, and that those who have well-founded fears are not silenced from placing them in the public arena. For this we need a space where matters can be debated honestly and in a mature fashion.

In the case of the Scottish referendum, that space was often provided by local, community meetings or by events organised by independent institutions associated with the universities or the voluntary sector. These introduced a much richer range of contributions than were available from politicians (whose party positions were known in advance, which limited their capacity to nuance their ideas) or from the media (who were generally locked into a particular narrative of what the “real” issues were). The churches did a good job in promoting these kinds of meetings and this Reimagining Europe website is performing a similar service in the present referendum.

We’re facing a decision that touches many aspects of our lives – our identity, our prosperity, our international standing, our cultural breathing space, and our capacity to address major issues of the twenty-first century. We need to seek out places where we can consider all these matters safely and openly. The future is uncertain, whatever the outcome, but it is in these other dimensions that we will find the resources to cope with it.

About the author

Alison Elliot’s work engages with the university, civil society and the church. Formerly a lecturer in cognitive psychology, she is currently an Honorary Fellow and Associate Director at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at New College, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. In 2004 she became the first woman to be appointed Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. She was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Conference of European Churches in 2009, having represented the Church of Scotland on its Central Committee for 12 years. She has been Convener of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and is a Trustee of Volunteering Matters. She was a member of the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services in Scotland (the Christie Commission) and has chaired a review of land reform for the Scottish Government. She holds a OBE and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.