I wonder if a majority of Scots would ever support independence if it was not for the SNP trying to make people THINK it would be beneficial? In most surveys the constitution is fairly far down the list of priorities for Scots after all.

i'm not sure, the way things are going, and the mess cameron is making alex salmond could end up being the next uk prime minister, maybe thats why he wants to wait.

David Lindsay makes the point I was going to, that the north of England (and indeed many other parts of England) have as little sympathy for Toryism as the broad stance of people in Scotland.

As for Gregor's finger-wagging - "There are two separate political cultures north and south of the border. In England the Tories are still a major force, in Scotland they are not. We may have similar social ills but the response to these is different."

I despise this 'different cultures' meme, which is just a step away from saying 'we are different, we are the GOOD people. They are not like us so why should we care what happens to them?' I suppose it comes down a fundamental committment to human compassion. It matters to me what happens to the disabled and disadvantaged in Bradford or Bristol as much as those in Dundee or Dumfries. So when someone witters on about being excited for Scotland, I have to shake my head and question their humanity. As I've said before, my compassion is not determined by a line on a map.

So how's that for foolish naivety, M Gallach?

independance is not all it is cracked up to be in all fairness we will have less capital to support the country for a start

Stephen Alexander

Thank you for that, I did wonder after reading through his comments what planet he was operating from, well done.

swatantra nandanwar,

speak for your self,the British people know exactly what they are voting for.

The Conservatives secretly WANT independence for Scotland. That's that, 40 safe Labour seats gone in a flash? They know they'll win the majority (not all of course) of all future elections with Scotland gone.

The SNP as a lawful democratic party with a majority in teh devolved legislature can pass the legislation to trigger teh referendum and pass it up to the Federal (Westminster) legislature as soon or as late as it wants. In its manifesto it is pledged to do so at a given year based on its track record in government. Thats democracy.

If you want to stop them, call a Uk wide constitutional convention mandated by the rule of law in Westminster after Lords reform to codify the constitution and define teh devolved legislative settlement for England.

Mike Cobley,

You are misrepresenting my views. I don't believe Scots are Good and English people bad. I do believe that there are different political cultures north and south of the border. We have 1 Tory MP. Scotland did not vote for a Tory government. At Holyrood, we have a Scottish Parliament which deals with devolved issues and where there is a substantial SNP majority; this is not the case in England. Voting patterns and political structures differ, even if the same social problems prevail (your disabled/disadvantaged comment) - and the responses to social problems differ accordingly. In Scotland, we have free prescriptions, free bus passes for the over 60s, no Fees for students, and so on. We have political parties which differ from their English counterparts (Labour/Lib Dems). No difference in political culture?

Do I care for what happens to the disadvantaged and disabled in England? Yes. And I care for what happens to the disadvantaged and disabled in the Republic of Ireland, in Germany, in Sweden..and so on. Why wouldn't I? If you think of yourself as British, does it stop you having compassion, Mike? Or is only Scottish people who support independence that you reserve this accusation for? It is silly and misses the point entirely. Through the 80s and 90s Scotland voted Labour and got Tory. Now we are in a similar position. If you think there is no difference in political culture north and south of the border, then I think you are deluding yourself.

David Lindsay,

if the SNP are a Tory party alive and kicking in Scotland, why do they support free prescription charges, free travel for the over 60s, no tuition fees, and so on. Hardly Tory policies those, are they? And how come Labour seats in Glasgow were lost to the SNP? Did those Labour people go over to the SNP because they felt they were a Tory party of Scotland? And why did Scotland wipe out the Tories?

As to your "white Protestant supremacists" - Cardinal O' Brien and other prominent Catholics have come out in support of the SNP. You represent an image of both Scotland and the SNP that is unrecognisable.

As for what the North of England should do if Scotland and Wales secede - I return to the point I made earlier that federalism is an option for England that very few people have discussed. Scotland has been talking about constitutional change for decades because it is an issue for us. England tends to assume the Westminster parliament is the English parliament but I note a few people advocating an assembly for the north of England. I'd certainly support that.

Qhy can't I post my comment?

David, I have posted a reply on your blog. The title you chose says much about your lack of understanding of Scottish politics. Here's my response:

I really don't understand if you support free prescriptions, no tuition fees, or not. They may be policies that the Tory party historically would have supported, but neither the Tories now, nor Labour support these policies. I'm guessing that's why the SNP are in power in Scotland.

As for Glasgow Council being Tory - it's been Labour for as long as I remember. And as for your "white Protestant supremacists" - I do not recognise that as being a facet of the Tories, of Labour, or the SNP in Scotland. There are prominent Catholics in all of these parties, Protestants too, atheists, Muslims, and so on. Prominent Catholics have given tacit support to the SNP - even in his letter to Alex Salmond today, the Bishop of Paisley writes: "As I said in a recent interview, your government has been very supportive of Catholic education and was very helpful regarding the visit of Pope Benedict XVI a year ago. So I recognise that until now we have had very good relations, and it is disappointing for me to have to write this letter." (The complete letter can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-15184791) Now, that's hardly the voice of a concerned Catholic addressing a "white Protestant supremacist".

Catholics will not be burned out of Scotland, nor will the English. I regularly have lunch with a friend who is a Catholic and votes SNP. He has not, so far as I am aware, packed his bags to flee. Many English people support the SNP in Scotland and vote for them.

Your views are wide of the mark, David. You can't make something so just by repeating it. If the north of England feels caught between a rock and a hard place, then I sympathise. But without an assembly, I can't see what other options you have - other than to froth and rage at Scotland and the South.

Yes, I'm absolutely loaded. That's why I live in Scotstoun.

And, David, you know nothing of Scottish politics.

The Conservatives don't care that much either way I recon, as they see it as a win win situation for them. They are quite happy to stay in the union and quite happy to leave it, thereby making Labour lose votes to the snp or look like a Scottish party, leaving England to the conservatives. I might be wrong, but i actually think that they feel quite relaxed about it.

Labour have more to lose, from the break up of the union politically than the conservatives. So i don't think it is that big a deal to cameron.

David, the SNP won their first Holyrood election by one seat. It was feasible that Labour could have won the parliament back and the SNP's time in office would have been seen as an 'aberation'. But in May of this year, the SNP won their second Holyrood victory with a massive landslide. They took 69 seats to Labour's 37. A recent poll had the SNP at 49%, up 5% since the election. So the fightback starts here, eh?

Ah Mike - I come not to sneer at your unionism, but will happily sneer at your foolish naivety, and your almost complete ignorance of what actually makes up the four nations that comprise the UK. I'm amazed at Labour's bizarre assumption that Scotland will simply realise that they did not mean to vote for the SNP, but will suddenly come in from the cold and rescue England from that horrible Cameron Man.

You just need to look at the articles on LabourHame or listen to Ed Milleband forgetting the name of favourite for the Labour Leader in Scotland (sic) to understand the complete inability of the Rest of the UK to understand the game changing nature of the SNP’s May Landslide.

For example - “The fact is that independence is not popular in Scotland, seldom overstepping low-30s percentages” – Err last Poll showed a majority (just) for the SNP’s preferred referendum wording, and Labour were on course for a Landslide majority until April this year.

Let’s take this one step at a time. First Scotland is a different country. It has a different legal system, different educational system, and different churches. Its media and newspapers are different, and its planning, environmental, NHS and public procurement systems and agencies are quite different. We still own our own water, and our electricity utilities are vertically integrated.

Different from England OK – like Ireland, like Denmark, like Norway. In other words not the same. Understand.

Next - Now lots of parts of Europe are” a patchwork of communities and social networks, each with its own distinct character and set of loyalties.” But these communities and social networks all tend to exist and work within a nation state that supports and nurtures these self same entities. But when that state (ie the UK) fails that “patchwork of communities and social networks, each with its own distinct character and set of loyalties” (ie Scotland), the peasants tend to revolt.

Like spending 60 years turning a weird fringe party (Scottish Nationalism – what a bizarre concept!) into a movement that by its very presence delivers a National Parliament, and then uses that Parliament to redefine what politics means in Scotland.

Like winning a mandate and majority that allows them to do just what they said they would – deliver for Scotland.

Its sneering attitudes like yours that will help deliver a yes vote in the 2015 referendum.

Keep it up – we appreciate it.

"""""cynical, not to mention desperate."""""

Which is what they are.

Bevan ridiculed the first parliamentary Welsh Day on the grounds that “Welsh coal is the same as English coal and Welsh sheep are the same as English sheep”. In the 1970s, Labour MPs successfully opposed Scottish and Welsh devolution not least because of its ruinous effects on the North of England. Labour activists in the Scottish Highlands, Islands and Borders, and in North, Mid and West Wales, accurately predicted that their areas would be balefully neglected under devolution.

Eric Heffer in England, Tam Dalyell and the Buchans (Norman and Janey) in Scotland, and Leo Abse and Neil Kinnock in Wales, were prescient as to the Balkanisation of Britain by means of devolution and the separatism that it was designed to appease, and as to devolution’s weakening of trade union negotiating power.

Abse, in particular, was prescient as to the rise of a Welsh-speaking oligarchy based in English-speaking areas, which would use devolution to dominate Welsh affairs against the interests of Welsh workers South and North, industrial and agricultural, English-speaking and Welsh-speaking.

Heffer’s political base was in Liverpool, at once very much like the West of Scotland and with close ties to Welsh-speaking North Wales. Betty Boothroyd and Bruce Douglas-Mann supported the Cunningham Amendment that effectively killed off Scottish devolution in the 1970s (the overwhelming opposition of the Welsh killed it off in Wales), and both George Cunningham and Douglas-Mann, together with several more occasional anti-devolutionists, later acceded to the newly founded SDP. Cunningham nearly retained his seat in 1983, and uniquely almost recaptured it in 1987. He has never joined the Liberal Democrats, instead still giving the SDP as the name of his party on the list of those former MPs who continue to hold House of Commons passes.

There was a high vote against devolution – relatively in Scotland, absolutely in Wales – in areas where the Liberal Democrat vote is also high. That same clear tendency was manifest in the referendum on a regional assembly in the North East, when there was also an enormous No vote in traditionally Labour areas.

There is a strong feeling among English, Scottish and Welsh ethnic minorities and Catholics that we no more want to go down the road of who is or is not “really” English, Scottish or Welsh than Ulster Protestants want to go down the road of who is or is not “really” Irish.

The Scotland Office Select Committee is chaired by Ian Davidson, a Co-operative Party stalwart and Janey Buchan protégé who is therefore a hammer both of Scottish separatism and of European federalism.

There is no West Lothian Question, since the Parliament of the United Kingdom reserves the right to legislate supremely in any policy area for any part of the country, the devolution legislation presupposes that it will do so as a matter of course, and anyone who does not like that ought to have voted No to devolution.

It would be pointless for the North of England (with a population considerably larger than that of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined) to remain in the United Kingdom if its economically leftish social conservatism serving and served by agriculture, manufacturing and small business, and rooted in Catholicism, Methodism and a High Churchmanship quite different from that in the South, were no longer able to support and to be supported, either by Scotland’s economically leftish social conservatism serving and served by agriculture, manufacturing and small business, and rooted in Catholicism, Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism, or by Wales’s economically leftish social conservatism serving and served by agriculture, manufacturing and small business, and rooted in Catholicism, several varieties of Nonconformity, and the sane High Churchmanship that provides the mood music to the Church in Wales.

The North would be at least as capable of independence as either Scotland or Wales, and would have every reason to pursue that path if they did. But who would then pay for the City to be bailed out next time, and the time after that, and the time after that? And what would the smug South East drink, or wash in?

If a referendum was forced on Scotland by the Tories, the SNP would simply advise voters to boycott it, and hold the 'real' referendum later.

Scots will not look kindly on interference from the Tories with their one MP in Scotland.

The SNP won a clear majority in the recent elections and therefore have the right to hold a vote during their clearly stated timescale.

Plus the unionist parties look like complete hypocrites here. They blocked a referendum during the last Scottish parliament, arguing the economic climate was not right..

Home Rule for England

I totally agree with you, call me Dave will find a way to ignore, evade or wiggle away from it just as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did.

David Lyndsay
Couldn't disagree more. Salmond and the SNP are keen to hold the referendum but on their timetable. They quite rightly calculate that they have the best chance of winning with a few years of Thatcher Part 2 economic policy being forced upon a country which consistently asks for social democratic politics.
The real reason independence is more likely now than ever is because the centre ground in uk politics has shifted so far to the right that Scotland and England have pretty much incompatible politics.
I would never have considered voting for independence had the Labour retained a real commitment to Social Democracy.
That is why they got trounced in May. The electorate now see the SNP as the more progressive party.
I for one can't wait for the day that Scotland finally gets the politics it asks for.

"It says it all that, even in the current situation, the SNP's supporters are rich enough to care so much about constitutional change." David Lindsay.

Is this a plea for keeping people poor so they don't ask for democratic change, David? Is there some nobility in poverty that you want to defend? Should one be poor and unrepresented?

If Scotland were better represented by our representative democracy we would be able to formulate our own responses to our social problems. It is a matter of giving people in Scotland control over the decision making that affects their lives.

There are two separate political cultures north and south of the border. In England the Tories are still a major force, in Scotland they are not. We may have similar social ills but the response to these is different. Scotland largely voted Labour for the Westminster election and the SNP won a landslide victory in May; a rejection of Toryism. What I want to see is a democratic structure in the UK that allows Scotland greater control over finances. I believe that federalism is one option and independence is another. To be honest, the status quo is not an option that will last much longer.

Martin Miller is right to point out David Lindsay's paid-for vanity publication but there's a lot more than that. What Lindsay doesn't tell you is that his single CiF article was never followed up because of what people found out about his methods. He's a fantasist who managed to get a Telegraph blog for a week before the editor discovered he'd faked his CV. Lindsay falsely claimed to be a Durham academic and the fraud was laughably easy to uncover. Lindsay leads an empty life making things up. As well as faking his CV, he pretended to set up a political party that would stand in every seat in the UK. The number was a little less than that - zero. He even ran away from standing in his own home seat. His knowledge of politics is also zero. One of the precious icons of Lindsay's stupidity that Durham students treasure is a screengrab of Lindsay trying to argue about economics. He was so humiliated he had to delete his own comments as well as his commenter's. His stupidest venture of all was to write to hundreds of journalists under a false name begging them to report the activities of David Lindsay. How did they manage to see through him??? His scams were exposed by Palatinate, the Durham mag, where he's been a figure of fun ever since he got expelled from Chad's.