In politics luck plays a greater part than many of its practitioners are willing to admit. Often it is the luck of facing an opposition party intent on self-destruction. Thatcher and Blair enjoyed that, and now it's Cameron's turn. Surely he can't believe his luck today? But his greatest escape comes not from the unplumbable depths of the Labour Party's stupidity but courtesy of the Electoral Commission. Their ruling on the European Union referendum has saved Cameron from one of the most dangerous unforced errors of his career—the wording of the referendum question.
David Cameron, and he is not alone in this, has learned the wrong lesson from the Scottish referendum. The SNP and the Yes campaign won the battle of perception. They appeared to have the passion, the vision and the energy. And this was was explained by the fact that they owned positivity because they were the "Yes" campaign. This time round the Prime Minister and his colleagues wanted to own the future, to be the change they wanted to see in the world. There is just one problem with this analysis. Change lost the Scottish referendum. The Yes campaign were routed.
This was the real lesson of the Scottish referendum—one that is only unnoticed because it is hiding in plain sight—the change proposition is the hardest one to win in a referendum. It is the unknown, the status quo is the known. Just say no turns out to be a pretty useless slogan for drug taking but a pretty solid guide to human motivation. Preserving what you have normally massively outweighs the prospect of winning something extra but unproven. Any student of Australian politics would have pointed to the referendum on the Republic—lost even when opinion was solidly for change and has been for a decade. Not out of line with Australian history—where only one in four referenda were won by Yes. Not out of line with the rest of the world where the same thing has been true in change referenda—the status quo routinely wins. Cameron should remember his Belloc: "always keep a hold of nurse/for fear of finding something worse."
Instead the government embraced a referendum question that made maintaining membership the change option which you had to sign up for. And compounded the error by focusing on the fact that the electorate would be voting Yes for a new deal, a renegotiated relationship. This despite the situation that the PM knows that there are no conceivable circumstances in which it would be a good idea for the UK to leave the EU. In so doing he gave the eurosceptics their greatest weapon—the chance to run a campaign that was the anti-change proposition. The chance to just say No—the greatest ever mobiliser of grievance. The merge my No campaign was intriguing—a left No to globalisation and capitalism merging with a right No to globalisation and migration. The Electoral Commission have nipped all that in the bud by changing the question. Do you want to remain (status quo) versus do you want to leave (change and risk)? Cameron has been rescued. Bullet dodged.
And the icing on the cake? It was a rescue delivered as a slap down. No humiliating reversal required, just the appearance of one–right down to the assertion that purdah will be imposed. So there'll be 28 days of civil servants zealously not allowing government to make announcements "prejudicial" to the referendum vote. Preceded by a far lengthier period—years, realistically— in which the entire government machine has marketed the EU. Any sensible Downing Street operation would take that deal. Concede on something you don't care about to avoid scrutiny of what really matters—your conduct in the period in which minds are made up. No one will be changing their mind in the final four weeks. Perceptions are being shaped right now—when purdah isn't in force.
All round, it's advantage Cameron.
