Union Defence Forces prepare for a march on Dundee.

This has been a general election to surprise us. Give this, perhaps it should not be reckoned astonishing that it continues to confound expectations. So it was, shortly before nine o’clock on Thursday night, that I found myself in the wholly unusual situation of feeling some sympathy for Ed Miliband.

Mr Miliband, who is now the bookmakers’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was skewered by members of the audience who were, all too plainly, agitated and vexed by the prospect Mr Miliband might do a “deal” with the SNP to secure parliamentary support for his administration’s programme. How, they wondered, could he countenance such an arrangement?

Well, the Labour leader said, he could not and would not. There would be no “coalition” with the SNP, nor any “deal” of any kind. English voters, in particular, had no need to worry. If the SNP wished to support Labour’s right to rule they could but Labour would not court their endorsement.

In such fashion, Mr Miliband was forced to choose between his party’s prospects in England and in Scotland. This was what prompted my sympathy because it was, unavoidably, an utterly invidious choice.

Unsurprisingly, he chose England, leaving the Scottish Labour party to its grisly appointment with the reaper. If English voters dislike the prospect of Labour being dependent upon SNP support, Scottish voters have consistently told pollsters they rather like the sound of that kind of arrangement. The SNP could scarcely contain their joy when Mr Miliband said he would prefer to lose than do a deal with the nationalists. Would, they chirped, Labour really rather see the Tories back in office? How very embarrassing for him.

Never before, I think, has the Scottish portion of a British general election been so distant from the election elsewhere. In truth, there is no “UK” election this year. Rather, there are four very different contests in each of the four national “constituencies” that, together, comprise the United Kingdom. Labour’s difficulty is that the rhetoric and positioning they need to deploy to win in England compromises their chances in Scotland. And vice versa.

The gloomy truth — for Unionists — is that this election is going to be a disaster no matter what the result. A weak Labour government that might require SNP support will antagonise voters in England but another term in office for David Cameron and the Conservatives is little more encouraging. It will, since the Tories are unlikely to hold more than two seats in Scotland, further infuriate voters in Scotland. Each outcome can — and will — be used to their advantage by the SNP.

The latter outcome will, as far as the SNP is concerned, add weight to their claim Scotland and England are such distinct political cultures it no longer makes sense for them to be part of the same constitutional apparatus. Scotland will, once again, be governed by a party it rejected on polling day. Independence will be presented as a matter of simple “democracy” more than as a kind of great national liberation.

But “democracy” cuts both ways. The dismay many Scottish voters will feel at the prospect of five more years of Tory-led government will be matched by English voters’ disgruntlement when faced by the prospect of being governed, in part, by SNP politicians for whom they never even had a chance to vote. In each case distinguishing between a ray of sunshine and voters in search of a grievance will require no great powers of detection or observation.

For a long time now, astute observers have wondered what would happen if England finally engaged with the constitutional arguments that so dominate political discourse north of the border. An English “backlash” would imperil the Union just as much as it is endangered by Scottish agitation. The Union can be broken in London and the home counties just as much as it can be weakened in Scotland.

The Conservatives have, for their own short term advantage, been happy to play on English fears of an outsized and undue Scottish influence at Westminster. Only voting Conservative can thwart the Jocks, you see. It is a message which, plainly, has “cut through” with English voters. If it had not there would be no need for Mr Miliband to so strenuously reject the idea he can only govern with the support of SNP votes.

Unfortunately, this message — which sounds so reasonable in England — is heard differently in Scotland. Here voters suspect it means that Scottish voices and even the Scottish interest are unwelcome in London. Scots may be led to Westminster water but on no account may they be permitted to drink. What is “common sense” in one part of the Kingdom is considered “insulting” and even “disenfranchising” in another.

Even though the SNP leadership insists, with some justice, that the modern SNP espouses an unusually civic form of nationalism it remains the case that. viewed from afar, it can seem less respectable and rather more ethnic than the SNP find comfortable to contemplate. Viewed from other parts of the kingdom, the SNP’s mere existence is easily understood as a kind of repudiation of the UK. Senior SNP figures have toned down their anti-British rhetoric in recent years — correctly surmising that such talk enthuses a nationalist fringe while appalling the silent majority of Scots — but this makes little difference south of the border where the SNP is still widely presumed to be an Anglophobic party.

The referendum, for all that interventions from outwith Scotland were often deemed unwelcome, was not just an affair for Scots. It was important to every citizen in every corner of the United Kingdom, even if they did not know or would struggle to articulate just why it was so important. A Yes vote would have changed the manner in which people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland thought of themselves too.

But, it has become clear, a No vote has longer-term implications too. It is not a question of back to normal, business as usual. On the contrary, something has changed. Simply holding the referendum made independence more likely one day than it had hitherto seemed. Suddenly an idea once the preserve of cranks and crackpots was entirely feasible. And if Scots were forced to return to first principles and question the existence of the United Kingdom, so too voters elsewhere were given the opportunity to reflect upon those matters too.

If asking the question made independence more tangible than it had ever previously been, however, it also acted as — and was certainly seen as — a slap in the face to the rest of the country. What, they have cause to think, was so bad about them that it made so many of us want to leave so much?

It is true that the costs and unpleasantness of divorce have saved marriages but second attempts to make a go of it only work if both sides are frank with one another and, crucially, committed to the task of salvaging something. The SNP, for all that they argue independence is not on the ballot paper next week, have not gone away. As Alex Salmond says “the dream shall never die”. In such circumstances, voters elsewhere in the UK are entitled to view Nicola Sturgeon’s promise to extend “a hand of friendship” with some scepticism.

Labour and the SNP each accuse the other of behaving in ways liable to “let the Tories back in”. Would Labour really rather lose than accept SNP support? Would the SNP really vote with the Tories do destroy a Labour government? The answer to each of these questions is No but each must at least pretend this is not in fact the case.

A hung parliament containing as many as 50 SNP MPs, however, creates ample room for mischief-making and, worse, resentment-stoking. Scots bridle at the thought their representatives are somehow beyond the pale; English voters resent the influence of the Scots. It is a recipe for a parliament of discontent that, far from repairing a damaged Union seems more likely to punch fresh holes in its defences. The Union, it should be clear, is less buoyant than it was. Indeed, it is holed and taking on water all the time.

This mutual resentment may easily become self-perpetuating. If the English “just aren’t that into” the Scots then the Scots will reciprocate. The two principal parties to the Union will become ever more suspicious of, and ever more estranged from, one another.

Gallingly, neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband appear the kind of statesman capable of perceiving the peril in which the Union still finds itself. Mr Cameron blithely says the constitutional question is “settled”. If he really thinks that, he should try coming to Scotland and speaking to Scottish voters. For his part, Mr Miliband knows Labour’s own long-term prospects will be greatly assisted by recovering in Scotland. Yet he show little sign of knowing how to achieve that recovery.

Unionism needs more patience, tact and generosity than is offered by either main party at present. It needs to recover its big, unifying, idea and the confidence to express that idea in actions as well as words. But if British politics becomes infused with cross-border resentment then the future is clear: the Union will be sunk.

This is the danger posed by this election. It seems likely to produce a result — one way or another — that makes matters much, much worse than they have hitherto been. England will be unhappy or Scotland will be unhappy. There is no plausible result that will satisfy both countries.

Neither Mr Miliband nor Mr Cameron has audited the Union, however. Neither has demonstrated a belief that the national interest trumps narrow, partisan, party advantage. If they have given much thought to the Union’s future they have kept those thoughts to themselves. The Smith Commission proposals are not enough and how, frankly, could they be since they were so hastily cobbled together? Nor does Mr Cameron’s determination to press ahead with “English votes for English laws” persuade us that he has thought long and hard about the better future governance of the United Kingdom.

During the referendum both sides tacitly agreed that the campaign was not a matter of “identity”. It was not about “them” and “us”. It was instead a battle of accountancy and rival forecasts of Scotland’s economic future and potential. This was all very well and good but still, especially for Unionism, insufficient. It reduced the Union to the status of a marriage of convenience and, implicitly, conceded that if the facts — and the economics — changed then so should the constitution.

The historian Tom Devine, explaining his decision to vote Yes, said all the Union still had was family, history and sentiment. He said this as those these were but “wee things”. They are nothing small, however. On the contrary, they are the building blocks of any society, any country. The things that make us who we are and point a way towards who we can be in the future.

But it takes a statesman to make family, history and sentiment seem real and relevant. The quiet, plangent, tragedy of contemporary Unionism is that it lacks statesmen. This election campaign, so long and so niggardly, has confirmed this gloomy reality. Neither Mr Miliband nor Mr Cameron has risen to the occasion. Instead, the Tory leader has cheerfully joined the SNP in pitting Scotland against England while Mr Miliband has, all too often, lived down to already low expectations.

The choosing time is almost upon us but no matter how the game unfolds it seems evident the real winners will be the SNP. That owes something to their strength, of course, but they have been gifted the field by a weak and divided Unionism incapable of rising above petty squabbles to perceive the real dangers ahead. The referendum, it turns out, was only the end of the beginning.

A version of this article appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on Saturday May 2nd, 2015.