Alex Salmond - The Dream Shall Never Die - 100 Days that Changed Scotland Forever

However, getting the disparate organisation to reflect the cohesion of a political party is proving much more problematic. Some things have worked really well, such as the launch of grassroots groups, the public meetings around the country, our social media offerings and the celebrity endorsements arranged by my former Special Adviser Jennifer Dempsie. But inevitably a cross-party YES board has found it difficult, even with great goodwill, to provide coherent strategic direction.

It is that strategic direction – the ability to take decisions on the focus of the campaign and to see them implemented – which wins elections and referendums.

I have therefore moved the decision-making to mimic SNP election organisation. Round the table, apart from Blair and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh from YES, will be Nicola, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, my long-standing press adviser Kevin Pringle, Geoff Aberdein, Stuart Nicolson, the political strategist Stephen Noon, and SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson. These are the battle-hardened group who planned and executed the resounding SNP success in 2011.

I have decided to move the meetings to Thursdays, which make a lot more sense for the campaigning rhythm of the week, and I have asked for proper information on our intelligence from the doorstep and also online, so that the meetings can take strategic decisions based on up-to-date information.

Staying at the Racecourse hotel in Ayr. Over dinner with prominent YES campaigners Marie and Drew Macklin, I recieve the very sad news that David Taylor of UEFA has passed away.

On Saturday I intervened to help David’s family get him into the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, transferred from Turkey, where he had taken ill on holiday.

David was one of the finest administrators that Scotland has ever produced. I had dinner with him in Bute House a couple of months back and he was ready to come out for YES. A great, great loss to the campaign and to Scotland.

Day Fourteen: Wednesday 25 June

Beginning to think this is the campaign I’ve been waiting to fight all of my life. And it’s down to the public I meet around the country – including the lovely crowd today at the ground-breaking of the new Kilmarnock College.

I had agreed to do an interview in front of an audience with former BBC reporter Derek Bateman in pretty relaxed fashion – a sort of Desert Islands Discs without the discs.

But it is the depth of the questioning from the people who have turned up, their perceptions, that really impresses me. Everyone is really getting into this battle.

These are the most informed audiences I have ever spoken to. I had questions lobbed at me such as ‘See on page 26 of the White Paper …’. This is third-degree politics at an advanced level, active citizenship. Whatever happens now we will be dealing with a changed people.

Later it was time to prep for FMQs before a productive dinner with major Scottish entrepreneur (and former Labour MP Mohammad Sarwar’s brother) Mr Mohammad Pervaiz Ramzan, his sons Amaan and Nabeel, and son-in-law Rahan.

These are seriously bright, positive people and totally engaging. What a pleasant contrast with the time-servers and dimwits who occupy the CBI in Scotland, most of whom have never run a business or would even recognise an entrepreneur.

They could play a key role in the campaign and the future of the country. We go to Ondine, one of the best fish restaurants in Scotland, run by celebrity chef Roy Brett. I judge my Muslim friends could use a good feed before the onset of Ramadan.

Day Fifteen: Thursday 26 June

My chiropodist treated my toenails – and gave me some useful insights.

I’ve known Leslie Grant for a long time (he used to look after my mum’s feet too). Leslie chats with his patients and his hill-rambling pals.

Both groups are heavily underrated political communities – perhaps not right up there with taxi drivers, but in a position to have lots of conversations.

Leslie confirms what I suspected: there is movement for YES up in them thar hills, but among his corn-ravaged pensioners of Falkirk things are not looking quite so promising.

FMQs has an end-of-term atmosphere and is generally acknowledged as a good send-off for the troops.

Day Sixteen: Friday 27 June

Meet Morgan Carberry again – and invite her to sing at Edinburgh Castle for the Chinese.

The American Fulbright scholar still faces getting her marching orders from the country.

I have agreed to intervene in her case with the aptly named Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, but have suggested to her that some publicity might help her cause. Indeed it might be the only thing that could help her cause short of immediate independence and a rational immigration policy.

Since it may well be a valedictory performance, she has agreed to sing a song or two for a Chinese investment group organised around the energy giant Petrochina.

The evening goes superbly well and by the end of it memorandums of understanding for £5 billion sterling have been signed and sealed (although it is fair to say that if there is many a slip between cup and lip there is also a difference between signing an MOU and delivering hard investment). Nonetheless a very good night’s work.

Morgan, whose singing in the New Club was beautiful, but who has a big voice for a small room, is in her true element in the Great Hall of the castle and steals the show with an impromptu performance which leaves ne’er a dry ee in the house.

Day Seventeen: Saturday 28 June

A warm reaction for me today – and a cool one for Cameron.

We are both in Stirling for Armed Forces Day, a Gordon Brown notion as part of his reinforcement of Britishness campaign of a few years back. This year, the Tory government, aided and abetted by their Labour allies in Stirling Council, decide to hold it in Stirling on the same weekend as the Bannockburn celebrations of the 700th anniversary of Robert Bruce’s famous victory.

My young advisers (and some of the not so young ones) are very wary of Bannockburn, since they believe it offers the ‘wrong image’ for modern Scottish nationalism. I disagree.

You would have to have a dead soul not to be inspired by the stand taken by Bruce and his army – and foolish indeed not to see the analogies with the current political struggle.

Bruce had first tried to reach an accommodation with Edward Longshanks to become his vassal king and then, when forced into open rebellion, had avoided pitched battle knowing that, castle by castle, town by town, victory would be his and Scotland’s. However, his headstrong younger brother had created a position where the showdown took place on midsummer’s day 1314.

I had tried to reach an accommodation with Cameron, tried to move the Parliament and the country forward, power by power, competence by competence. However, my inability to get traction after the 2011 election on a devo max proposal from enough people and organisations across civic society in Scotland created the circumstances where a showdown would take place on 18 September 2014.

Like Bruce, we are engaged with a force of awesome power. Like Bruce, we are faced with a pitched battle not completely of our choosing, and like Bruce, we have to gamble to win the day.

In any event, on Armed Forces Day the UK government’s best-laid schemes gang agley. Cameron’s all too blatant attempts to play politics rebound pretty badly.

Although the military crowd reaction is not unanimously favourable towards me it is still positive: indeed warm. The reaction to Cameron is decidedly cool.

Why should it not be, since they are predominantly a crowd of working-class Scottish families on a day out and Cameron is a Tory toff on a day trip?

Meanwhile at Bannockburn, where the organisation is struggling with the surge of the great crowd which has turned up, the reaction towards me is both unanimous and hugely favourable.