Has The London Olympics Undermined The Scottish Nationalists?

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OLYMPICS NEWS, 2012 Summer Olympics Canada, Scottish Nationalist Party, Scotland's Referendum, Team GB, Alex Salmond, scotland, Scotland's Referendum, UK Politics News

There has been an undeniable surge of patriotism and national pride since the start of the London Olympics less than a fortnight ago. But has the success of "Team GB" undermined the case for Scottish independence? Are we all now much happier living side by side inside the United Kingdom?

Below, Labour's Tom Harris, Member of Parliament for Glasgow South, debates the SNP's Humza Yousaf, Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow.

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The London Olympics Has Undermined The Scottish Nationalists

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Tom Harris Labour MP for Glasgow South and Shadow Environment Minister

They started it! Well, they did...

Much tartan-tinged indignation has emerged among SNP ranks in the last few days. They claim, with that hurt, innocent look they've cultivated over the years, that they just can't understand why all these big Unionist bullies are being so horrid to them. Why try to make political politics out of the Olympics, guys? Let's just all celebrate the triumphs of Team GB, yeah? Peace and love, man...

Or something similar.

If only the likes of Pete Wishart, the Perthshire SNP MP, could have foreseen the enthusiasm with which even Scots have embraced the games. Perhaps then he and his colleagues wouldn't have embarked on their nine-year sneer back in 2003 when Tony Blair announced the government would back a London bid to bring the games here in 2012. When the whole country - yes, including Scotland - celebrated the success of the bid on 6 July 2005, Pete and his pals were grumpily describing London's winning bid as a triumph for the English capital only. Scotland, claimed Pete, would gain precisely "zilch" from the Olympics and would even end up subsidising the event (no doubt using "Scotland's oil"...).

To understand the SNP modus operandi, you really have to sit near them in the chamber of the House of Commons. Whenever any major debate is taking place, the SNP group leader, Angus Robertson, will sit and murmur loudly, not quite heckling, but not quite speaking either. No-one listens to him, but we all hear him, chuntering away, no doubt rehearsing all his newly acquired grievances alongside his more beloved long term ones. Or maybe he's just repeating bits of dialogue from the weekend omnibus of "River City". It's difficult to tell and no-one really cares. But that constant drip, drip of sneering negativity has been well employed in the SNP's campaign against British Olympic pride.

It went up a few gears when the First Minister himself, at the start of the Olympics, wished the best of luck to every member of Team GB... every member who was Scottish, that is. Never mind that many Scottish athletes would depend on their non-Scottish team mates to win a medal; what's the point of wishing one member in a four-person relay team luck? Alex could not bring himself to wish luck to the whole of the British team, only to those he christened (and I cringe even to write this) "Scolympians". Yes, I know.

This was a political error that was uncharacteristic. Salmond would normally be too astute to do something so clumsy and ungracious. What did he have to lose by being magnanimous and wishing the whole of Team GB the best of luck? This is, after all, a man who saw some political advantage in claiming (erroneously, it turned out) to be an "anglophile".

The gaffe is even more unusual when you consider that Salmond's desperation to see a bounce in the polls for independence has forced him to reassure Unionist voters that "Great Britain" will still be around even after we split from the rest of the country. We'll still have the Queen, the pound, Nato, Trident, the BBC... We're all waiting for him to say that only by voting for independence can the Union be saved.

So when the whole of Scotland was cheering on Jessica Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah, Salmond was, presumably, regarding their medal-winning achievements as no more notable than those of "other" "foreign" teams.

Cue Unionist (ie, my) criticism. And suddenly the more enlightened (always a subjective term when discussing nationalism) members of the SNP were using every opportunity to wish the whole of Team GB well, and castigating us for daring to criticise the First Minister and trying to turn the Olympics into a political football, etc. They obviously realised that Salmond had erred and are frantically trying to shore up their claim to be progressive and modern.

It's all good fun for those of us who miss politics when sport takes over the airwaves. Will the games have any affect on support for the SNP or independence? In the short term, maybe, but not significantly. In the long term, not at all. And that's at least partly because the SNP being ungracious, sneering and negative is hardly news to Scots, even to those who vote for them.

Tom Harris is Labour's MP for Glasgow South and Shadow Environment Minister.

Humza Yousaf Member of Scottish Parliament

By any measure the level of home support for Team GB athletes has been astronomical, even watching on my TV in the living room the noise from Olympic Park, the Velodrome or the Aquatic Centre has been deafening.

There seems to be a collective spring in the nation's step which is rubbing off onto our heroic sports men and women with GB now sitting third in the medals table. Incidentally, it is also our Scottish athletes' best showing in almost a hundred years with our sports men and women notching up nine medals.

However, in the midst of all this collective euphoria, there seems to be politicians out there hell-bent on ruining the Olympic experience for all of us.

"Never forget, small minded nationalists are out to destroy Team GB!" came the apocalyptic tweet from failed Scottish Tory leadership candidate Murdo Fraser after Andy Murray's sensational thrashing of Roger Federer to claim Olympic gold on Sunday. Similar tweets have been commonplace amongst anti-independence politicians and commentators over the last week.

The truth is that London 2012 will not swing the referendum on Scottish Independence one jot. I am sure those who are passionately committed to remaining as part of the United Kingdom and those who vociferously believe in independence for Scotland will remain staunchly entrenched in their respective positions regardless of how many medals we chalk up. However, the undecideds, who may well hold the key in the referendum battle, are canny enough to know the debate is much bigger than what colour of kit Andy Murray wears.

That is why the latest poll, which came out during the Olympics and after the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, showed support for the SNP had risen 2% from our historic landslide victory in May 2011.

The vast majority of people understand that independence isn't, as our opponents incorrectly assert, about flag-waving, kilt-wearing or shortbread-eating romanticised Braveheart nationalism.

In fact those who believe in independence for Scotland, including Alex Salmond himself, have been saying for years that our cause is not about flags or anthems but fairness and compassion.

The referendum that will take place in 2014 is a referendum about whether we want to have the full powers to create jobs for our children, whether or not we want to rid ourselves of the obscenity of nuclear weapons or whether or not we should have the powers to create a welfare system that pays for work and doesn't harm the most disadvantaged in our communities.

Fundamentally, our premise is very simple, we believe in independence because we think every decision about Scotland should be made by those who care the most about the interests of our nation, which by definition is the people of Scotland.

So there is no contradiction in cheering on Ennis, Hoy or Farrah, as I have done over the last week and yet believing in Scotland's ability to completely run her own affairs, just as she has been doing in-part, since the advent of the Scottish Parliament.

Just as Murray trained in Spain with Rafa Nadal to perfect his tennis skills, I see no reason why Scottish athletes, in an independent Scotland, couldn't train in whatever city in the world that helps them progress in their chosen sporting field - be that within or outside of the UK.

The discussion on Scottish independence has a long way to go, but politicians of all hues have a responsibility to raise the level of debate. Arguing over whether or not Andy Murray's lips were moving during God Save the Queen is frankly pathetic. As a 27 year old, perhaps it is unusual for me to tell other politicians this - but guys grow up, get a grip and let us enjoy the Olympic Games in peace!

Humza Yousaf is the SNP's Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow.