IN A converted shop in Aberdeen—on Union Street, appropriately—telephone canvassers for the anti-independence campaign know their script. “Aye, they’ll give us more power even if we vote No,” Neil says down the line. His listener seems unconvinced. “But they will,” he counters, insistently. “After all, they don’t want another referendum in five years’ time.” “I think that persuaded her,” he says, replacing the receiver and annotating his list of voters.

Since the establishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999, powers over education, health and policing have been transferred to it from London. More will follow in 2016, including further freedom to vary income-tax rates. But polls show that Scottish voters want still more devolution. As the nationalists surge, the unionist parties have scrambled to offer it. On September 8th Gordon Brown, a former prime minister, outlined the most drastic plan yet. He proposed that almost all remaining areas of domestic policy, including taxation, should be devolved if Scots vote No.

Even if Scottish voters reject independence on September 18th, then, Britain will not continue as before. The state will become looser and more untidy—with particular consequences for the one country so far untouched by devolution.

English voters have long been startlingly relaxed about the growing power of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. According to the British Election Study, the proportion opposing Scottish devolution has averaged just 17% since 1997 and has never risen above 23%. Nor do the English seem to want any kind of devolution for themselves. In 2004 the north-east voted overwhelmingly against a regional assembly. In 2012 nine out of ten cities rejected elected mayors in referendums. Fully 17 years after a Labour government started handing power to the periphery of Britain and to London, provincial England is still overwhelmingly run from Westminster.

But the English are growing uneasy. In Berwick-upon-Tweed, a border town in the north-east whose residents speak with lilting Lowland accents, celebrate St Andrew’s Day and drink Irn Bru, residents feel increasingly separate from their neighbours three miles to the north. Jim Smith, a local councillor, says the referendum has intensified jealousy of Scots, who enjoy benefits such as free medical prescriptions and free university tuition. According to the Future of England Survey, a research project by Edinburgh and Cardiff universities, many English voters share his gripes. A poll in April found that, by a margin of four to one, they think Scotland should receive a smaller share of public spending if it remains in the union.

Despite devolution, Scottish MPs have the same voting rights in Westminster as their English counterparts. This raises the “West Lothian question”, a quandary first posited in 1977 by Tam Dalyell, who asked why he, as MP for the Scottish seat of West Lothian, should vote on matters concerning English constituents but not his own. The question has mostly been fodder for think-tanks and curious MPs, but it becomes more pressing as Scotland acquires more powers. The Future of England Survey shows that the proportion strongly agreeing that Scottish MPs should not vote on English laws jumped from 18% in 2000 to 55% in 2012—a share that will surely increase further if “devo max” comes to pass.

Citing such findings, constitutional reformers are agitating for a debate about England’s future. On September 11th the Electoral Reform Society, along with a roster of academic and political grandees, called for a constitutional convention after the referendum. Various possible reforms are bubbling away, among them English-only votes, a cut in the number of Scottish MPs and the creation of new English political institutions.

None of these is likely to happen soon. The first option is impractical; it is surprisingly hard to disentangle English-only bits of legislation from those affecting the rest of the country. The second option would undermine the integrity of the House of Commons. In a politician-hating age, there is no obvious public clamour for more government institutions. But two more modest ideas look promising.

The McKay Commission, a panel of wise folk asked to solve the West Lothian question, last year suggested that bills could pass through committees of English MPs—reflecting the English party balance—for amendment, before returning to the full House of Commons for a final vote. This would introduce an English dimension without undermining the equal status of MPs or affecting the calculation of funds for the Scottish government. As today, budget provisions would be decided by separate votes of the whole house.

Another idea gaining ground is for Westminster to press ahead with devolution within England. Despite the failure of the mayoral referendums, the government has given local councils more money and powers through bespoke “city deals”. Think-tanks are urging it to increase the scope and ambition of this programme, handing powers especially to local authorities that have banded together to create larger units, as in Manchester. In Yorkshire, council leaders are even mulling the creation of a regional assembly—a project that had been thought dead.

These reforms would work within the existing structures of the British state rather than transforming it. They would allow devolution to happen unevenly, where and when demand for it arises. Together, they comprise a messy answer to England’s constitutional quandaries, but perhaps the most likely to work. Assuming, of course, that Scottish voters decide to stay in the United Kingdom.