I am an Englishman with a profound admiration and respect for Scotland. I warned – in 1992 and 1997 – that devolution would lead to separation, and my alarm grew when I saw the terms of Labour’s 1998 Devolution Bill. Yet, to appease Scottish demands, and for their own electoral advantage, Labour ignored all the risks. Devolution will kill separation stone dead, they said. It didn’t. Instead, it fuelled it. In the referendum, to their credit, Labour fought for the Union, although they wholly failed to acknowledge that the crisis was a direct result of their own policy. The Union was battered, but survived. Labour would lose all credibility if they put it all at risk again.