THERE is nothing in Alistair Darling’s demeanour to suggest impending doom. Stepping into a sun-drenched auditorium in Greenock, on the Firth of Clyde, the man charged with keeping Britain together has an air of brisk positivity. It could not be called optimism. The former Labour chancellor of the exchequer retains the manner of the Edinburgh advocate he once was: clear about what he thinks, insistent to a degree, yet a little world-worn and, in the end, phlegmatic. It was evident in the undemonstrative way he saved the financial system after RBS, formerly the world’s biggest bank, went bust. It is evident now, with opinion polls suggesting the separatist “Yes Scotland” campaign is surging a fortnight before the country votes on independence.

There was no reference to that in his speech. In his clear, but too-fast, delivery, which makes his arguments sound more humdrum than they are, Mr Darling first protested his patriotism—“I love my country”—then put it aside. “This poll is not a test of our Scottishness. It is a test of common sense,” he said. He then spelt out the risks of secession, for Scotland’s currency, jobs and pensions, on which his cross-party Better Together campaign’s case is based. The audience listened uneasily. Grey-haired and unionist, it did not want arguments so much as reassurance.

“Your new posters are not going to do it,” said an anxious-looking man of the billboard campaign Mr Darling was launching. Then he listed a few of the Yes Campaign’s Utopian claims; “Why don’t you do more to repudiate them?” he said, to more murmured approval than Mr Darling’s speech received. “I’m worried they’re blackmailing people to vote for them. How are you going to stop that?” asked a woman. “I was at the BBC debate,” said a teenager, referring to Mr Darling’s recent humbling by Alex Salmond, the nationalist leader and Scotland’s first minister, in a televised brawl. “We’re not telling people they’re exaggerating the cost of the nuclear deterrent.” He was right; but it was striking, in a society that retains a trace of old-school respect for its leaders, how little deference he showed Mr Darling.

A few hours later, on September 2nd, YouGov released a poll suggesting the unionist lead had slipped by 22 points, to a mere six, in under a month. Investors, who had taken little note of the referendum, were startled. The chief Treasury official, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, suggested for the first time that he was making contingency plans for a Yes vote. So this was the week the British establishment woke up to the fact that the United Kingdom might not last the month, which makes it a good moment to ask: has Mr Darling messed up?

Better Together certainly reflects his low-key leadership style. It was always going to be hard to match the nationalists’ iconoclastic zeal; nonetheless, the unionists’ failure to compete on the ground has been shocking. By any measure—leafleting, billboards, cold-calling—the Yes side is ahead. Your columnist’s neighbour in Greenock said he had come from north of the Clyde and hoped Better Together would hold some sort of a rally up there before the vote. Yet he, like most Scottish voters, said he was most concerned that the unionists have not articulated a positive case for the 307-year-old union’s prolongation.

In fact, Mr Darling has done so constantly; yet chiefly by recounting benefits, such as freedom of movement and the sharing of risks to the state pension, that Scots take for granted. When Mr Darling suggests—perfectly logically—that a Yes vote would mean the partial or complete loss of these, he is disbelieved or accused of negativity. This is unfair; but politics is an art of persuasion and Mr Darling’s lack of charisma is a failing.

That was apparent shortly after his Greenock speech, when Bagehot heard Gordon Brown make essentially the same arguments to an audience east of Glasgow. The former Labour prime minister was immense, prowling the stage like a tormented zoo creature, moulding the air with his hands, compounding—as Mr Darling is too reticent to do—the mundane details of union into a resounding case for equity and social justice. It was a brilliant performance—and therefore a shame that Mr Brown is too aggressively partisan to have led the unionist campaign. True to form, he ended the evening telling gags against posh Tories; it is hard to imagine him addressing their annual party conference in Scotland, as Mr Darling did.

The truth is, there was no one obviously better than Mr Darling to lead Better Together, and if the campaign reflects his limitations, that is unsurprising. Yet in one big respect he has bungled and, if the nationalists sneak to victory, it should haunt him.

Rearrange the deckchairs

Mr Darling apprehends, again correctly, that the dissatisfaction many Scots feel with the status quo is rooted in the same feelings of frustration and insecurity evident across the careworn West. Voters fear their current prosperity is unsustainable, that their children’s future is bleak and that their politicians are unable to right matters. Mr Salmond’s achievement is to have presented himself, mendaciously, as being outside that elite and to have presented independence as an answer to the economic anxiety. Mr Darling knows this is bogus. Yet such is the popularity of Mr Salmond’s constitutional argument it would have been prudent to spell out a far more compelling alternative, in terms of a promise of further devolution to Scotland, than Mr Darling has done. The cross-party nature of his campaign has made this hard: Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats are all for more devolution, but to different degrees. Yet it fell to Mr Darling to make them act in concert and he seems hardly to have tried.

Perhaps he thought there was no need. Most Scots who say they want more devolution will vote No. Wooing the rest, with a more compelling alternative to Mr Salmond’s Utopia, was only ever an insurance policy. Yet in an increasingly tight contest, Mr Darling, and Britain, are looking perilously exposed.