Talking about independence without falling out

This page is for supporters of independence who want to talk to people who aren't - a parent, a workmate, the friend who voted No in 2014 and doesn't regret it. It says openly what the rest of this site implies: most minds that change on this question change in conversations between people who trust each other, and the FAQ pages here are built to be useful in exactly those conversations.

One thing before anything else. The person you're talking to is not a target, a project, or a vote to be harvested. They're someone whose doubts are mostly reasonable and who has noticed, correctly, that this is a big decision with real risks. Treat the conversation as a chance to understand what they actually think, and you'll do more good than any argument you could open with.

What the evidence says

Political persuasion has been studied to death, and the findings are humbling for anyone who has ever shared an angry post at midnight.

Mass campaign contact barely moves anyone. The largest analysis of its kind, covering 49 field experiments, found the persuasive effect of conventional campaigning - leaflets, calls, doorstep pitches - on people's choices in general elections was, on average, zero (Kalla and Broockman, American Political Science Review, 2018).

What has been shown to work is slower and more personal. In randomised field experiments published in the same journal, ten-minute doorstep conversations about immigration in which the canvasser listened non-judgmentally and swapped real experiences with the voter produced attitude change still measurable four months later - while otherwise identical conversations that led with arguments alone moved nobody at all (Kalla and Broockman, American Political Science Review, 2020). The technique is called deep canvassing, and its core is almost embarrassingly simple: ask, listen, and only then share.

Honesty about the limits, as ever. Those studies measured attitudes on social questions, not constitutional ones, and no study guarantees that any conversation will move anyone. The claim here is modest: listening-first conversation is the best-evidenced persuasion technique we have, and it happens to be the one available to every single supporter at no cost.

Who to talk with

Talk with people you already know, about doubts they actually hold. That's the whole list.

The people most likely to move are soft Nos and undecideds: people who lean No out of caution rather than identity, who have one or two specific worries doing most of the work. Committed Nos are not your job - their vote is as sincere as yours, and hounding them helps nobody. Committed Yeses don't need persuading; they need to be registered and to turn up.

And some people just don't want to have this conversation with you. Respect that the first time it's signalled. The relationship matters more, and a door left open gets walked through more often than one that's been battered.

How to have the conversation

Ask before you argue. "What would worry you most about it?" is the single most useful sentence on this page. It replaces a whole constitution you'd otherwise have to defend with one question you can answer well. And listen to the answer - actually listen, don't reload.

Take the worry seriously, because it probably is serious. Pensions, mortgages, the border, the deficit: these are not daft questions, and the fastest way to lose someone is to wave them away. Every page on this site exists because a question deserved a real answer.

Concede early and without being asked. Tell them the deficit numbers are genuinely awkward before they raise it. Tell them "once in a generation" really was said, often. The moment you volunteer an inconvenient fact, you stop being a campaigner in their eyes and start being someone worth listening to. This site is built the same way, on purpose - every page has a section conceding what's uncertain or uncomfortable.

One worry at a time. Nobody was ever argued into a new constitution in one sitting. Answer the pension question properly and leave the currency for another day. Persuasion on this scale is a drip, not a firehose.

Share the page, not a sermon. Every FAQ here puts the short answer first and its sources at the bottom, so you can send a link with "here's the fullest answer I've seen - check the sources yourself, they're all listed." The invitation to check the working does more than the answer itself. That's also what the copy buttons on each page are for: one sourced fact, portable.

Leave it better than you found it. The aim of any single conversation is not a converted voter. It's that the person thinks "that was fair" afterwards. People change their minds privately, weeks later, when nobody's watching and nobody gets to gloat.

Which page answers which worry

"What happens to my pension?" - the pensions page
"My mortgage would go up" - mortgages and the currency question
"Scotland's too wee, too poor" - too wee and the deficit
"The banks would leave" - banks
"We'd lose the English market" - trade with the rest of the UK and the border
"We'd be out of the EU for years" - rejoining the EU
"What about the NHS?" - the NHS
"Who'd defend us?" - defence and NATO
"I can't stand the SNP" - you don't have to
"You said once in a generation" - didn't we settle this?
"If Scotland can't run a ferry..." - the ferries page owns it
"Westminster will never allow it anyway" - the route
"Wouldn't more devolution do?" - devolution

If someone's worry isn't on this site yet, tell us - the questions people actually ask are exactly the ones we want to answer.

Your conduct is part of the case

Fence-sitters judge the destination by the behaviour of the people pointing at it. Every sneer at a No voter, every gloating quote-tweet, every public feud inside the movement confirms a cautious person's suspicion that this is a grievance in search of a country. The reverse is also true: a supporter who is calm, fair, honest about the hard parts and relaxed about disagreement is walking evidence that an independent Scotland would be a reasonable place run by reasonable people.