Project Fear

Project Fear been used to characterise claims of economic and socio-political dangers–primarily those that would result from a change to the existing political status quo–as scaremongering and pessimism. The phrase was coined by Rob Shorthouse, who was the "Better Together" campaign's director of communications for the Independence Referedum in 2014. Originally intended as a joke for Yes Scotland to use in it's complaints about Unionist scaremongering it backfired spectacularly and stuck as a label for anything negative the Unionist side had to say about a future independent Scotland.