Dear Alex
Well there’s no point in pretending. I was one of those who
gave you a tonne of grief after the first debate. And I don’t regret that.
Well. Maybe a little bit. Anyway. Having had a rant about how you let the
grassroots down by resorting to petty party political squabbling, it is only
fair to give you a major thumbs up for your efforts last night.
I cannot begin to imagine the kind of pressure you must have
been under when you stepped out onto into that Glasgow Wimbledon final. A
penalty in a shoot out for the Champions League. Like they say on the other side of the pond, it was the bottom of the ninth.....
Years and years and years of hard work and slog to arrive at
a very particular moment in time when everything is suddenly on your shoulders
and nobody else’s. And when you arrive at such a moment of truth, it must be
horribly apparent that there will be nobody in the world to blame if you screw
up.
A lifetime’s work can go flying out of the window in the
blink of an eye as the putt lips out or the serve goes long or the weakly hit
penalty nestles into the goal keeper’s chest.
One minute you stand on the very cusp of greatness.
The next minute you are yesterday’s man. An occasionally played
insert in the archive footage building up to the main event.
Christ, you must have been sick with yourself after the
first debate. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the first time in your whole
career that you have ever failed on that particular stage. All those times
before when it hadn’t mattered all that much, you had always taken the day with
ease. But when it really counted, you lost the winning touch. The Mojo went
west.
And once you’ve missed one of those five footers….
And once you’ve double faulted on match point….
Once you’ve mishit a penalty…..
Oh yeah. It’s bloody hard to get back on the horse and step
back up to the plate. Not Surprisingly, Churchill came up with a masterful
quote which kind of sums it up.
“Success
is the ability to go from one failure to
another
with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Too right it is.
I guess you must have spent quite a while in front of the
mirror yesterday taking a long hard look at yourself. The point of no return.
The moment of now or never. Cometh the hour and all that.
Christ, you must have been nervous! Bloody terrified. But
you managed not to let it show and for that you have my complete respect.
Taking Alistair Darling to the cleaners was no more than you should have
expected of yourself. But it still had to be done and you did it.
And if you hadn’t? Well that wouldn’t have born thinking
about.
It seems that the media is frantically trying to tell us
that even though you won, it still wasn’t the kind of game changer that was
really needed.
Well, they would say that wouldn’t they? They’ll spin the
thing for Better Together no matter what happens. If David Cameron were to call
in an air strike on the Holyrood Parliament, the Daily Mail would still claim
it is absolute proof of the PM’s unbridled love for the Jocks. You only bomb
the ones you love and all that.
The ground level reality is a million miles from the
propaganda of the press. I did a meeting in Portpatrick last week and all the
guys who were out and about knocking doors were completely buzzing. They told
me how everything has changed over the last couple of weeks. Those on the doorstep who a month
ago said the dinner was on the table now want to stand and chat. And everyone
is saying it’s going to be 'Yes'. And not just plain old 'Yes'. It’s 'Hell Yes'! 'Bring it on
Yes'! 'Kick their sorry London
The tectonic plates are shifting. The sound of a subterranean
grinding is making its way up from the centre of the earth. Louder and louder
and louder. This must be what a rebellion feels like. Growing from distant
voices on the edge of town to a vast sprawling mob crashing through the doors
of the palace.
They all will keep on pretending that ‘No’ is still going to
win of course. Remember that PR guy working for Saddam Hussein when he gave a
press conference saying the Americans had been stopped in their tracks whilst an
Abrams tank appeared in the street outside the window behind him?
I think that is how it is now. Every day the momentum is
getting ever greater. The grass roots didn’t need you to be Mandela last night,
Alex. We just needed you to recover your nerve and put him away.
And you did.
You stepped right up the plate and it must have been a hard
thing to do.
And you did it.
So hats off.
Respect.
Now it’s on the rest of us to get out there and win this
bloody thing.
Oh and by the way. If you are reading this from anywhere in
the South West of Scotland, then try and make it along on Friday night to
listen to Tommy Sheridan do his stuff in Moniave. One day you will really enjoy
telling your grandchildren all about it. Telling them all about those heady
days in the summer of 2014 when Scotland
One day you’re going to want to say those most treasured
words of the old when talking to the young about mighty times gone by.
You’re going to want to say ‘I was there.’
So be there.
The Memorial Institute.
Moniave
7.30pm
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