21/09/2014
"Some 40 years ago, having observed a common pattern to several high-profile elections in Britain, the US and France",
writes Booker, "I coined what, in a playfully journalistic way, I called "Bookerâs law". In each case, six months before election day, one side had looked to be well ahead in the polls".
"As the day neared, however, the gap closed, to the point where we were being excitably told that it was 'too close to call', 'neck-and-neck' and 'going right to the wire'. But then, in each case, the easy winner turned out to be the side that had looked likely to win six months before".
Last week, as he wondered whether Scotland would again follow this pattern, he reflected on how, from the success or failure of either side, we could draw at least one clear lesson. If the "yes" vote had won, as many have pointed out, the lesson would have been that this was a further terrifying indictment of how, in recent decades, we have all felt betrayed by Westminster's political class.
Somewhere in the Nineties, a fearful gulf began to open up between politicians of all the major parties and the rest of us. Right across the policy spectrum, and certainly aided by the ever-increasing amount of our law that was coming from Brussels, our politicians seemed to have floated off to another planet, no longer capable of speaking in language we could relate to.
Never was this alienation more obvious than in this recent campaign when, at the last minute, our three party leaders â David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband â all rushed up in a panic to Scotland, with such extraterrestrial ineptitude that it seemed that "Team Westminster", as Alex Salmond so aptly called them, had become his most powerful weapon.
But if, despite this, Mr Salmond was still to lose, it became clear that his own fatal weakness was that he so obviously didnât have a plausible "exit plan" to convince voters that an independent Scotland could prosper.
To not one of the key practical questions did he have a convincing answer, from what would happen to the currency or our Armed Forces, to the future of North Sea oil. "With one mighty bound Scotland will be free" was all he had to offer. As it turned out, the vacuum at the heart of that fantasy was a key factor in his losing the day.
But we can see exactly the same fatal flaw in all those who clamour for Britain to leave the EU. Not one of the recent flood of half-baked pamphlets produced by "Better off Outers" has shown any grasp of the complex issues that would be involved in making this possible.
And without a plausible exit plan, any In/Out referendum campaign would be successfully dominated by a tidal wave of what my friend Richard North calls "Fud" â fear, uncertainty and doubt â about how Britain outside the EU would lose âthree million jobsâ by being shut out of the EU's single market.
A properly worked out case to show how Britain could indeed thrive outside the EU (and still have full access to its single market) has no more been put by the Eurosceptics than Mr Salmond could explain how Scotland might happily survive outside the UK.
Now we have got this terrifying diversion behind us, one of our next priorities must be to come up with a properly worked-out strategy whereby our now still United Kingdom can sensibly separate itself from the increasingly dismal mess that is the European Union.
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