There’s an intriguing interview in today’s Sunday Herald with ‘Better Together’ campaign director Blair McDougall (described by the paper as a “Labour apparatchik”), to mark the anniversary of the campaign’s launch. We recommend buying the paper – our digital copy costs just 69p from PressReader – and reading the whole thing, but if you’re pressed for time the last few paragraphs sum up the content pretty accurately.

And if you’re really in a rush, the last two sentences will do.

(As it’s a long extract, we’ve emphasised Mr McDougall’s quotes for readability.)

“Things are set to heat up this autumn. As the campaign enters its final year in September, and the SNP Government publishes its white paper on the mechanics of independence around November, Better Together plans ‘a pretty big offensive’, McDougall says. Top priority will be trashing the white paper, or ‘testing its credibility’, as he puts it. ‘If you published an election manifesto and it wasn’t costed, you would rightly be torn to shreds. They need to pass at least as stringent a test.’ But independence isn’t for five years, so how could the Government produce costings? ‘Well, if it’s possible for John Swinney and Alex Salmond to make commitments on pensions and youth unemployment, then they need to cost those policies,’ he huffs. ‘If they can’t even give us, for example, how much the pensions policy will cost over an economic cycle, then people are just not going to believe they’re real commitments.’ And how long is the average economic cycle? ‘Well, that’s a, eh, eh, that’s a how long is a piece of string question.’ Quite. In other words, Better Together will set the SNP impossible tests, then fail them. It’s a strategy that’s worked for the last 12 months. Don’t expect any change in year two.”

Just out of curiosity, incidentally, we had a look back at the Herald’s coverage of that launch a year ago. Entitled “No team unveil ‘better together’ positivity”, it offers a few choice quotes of its own. We’ve picked out some of our favourites below.

“The campaign for a No vote in the independence referendum is to call itself “Better Together” to help present a positive case for the union.