It had already been disconcerting enough as that superficial, bad-tempered campaign unfolded to see how the politicians, far from rising to the occasion, were sinking so dismally far below it. Not one seemed capable of facing up to the real implications of this splitting of our nation into two. In all his bluster and bullying, Alex Salmond has simply not begun to take on board the reality of the position in which an independent Scotland would find itself. Just one instance of this has been his inability to recognise that, by throwing off the yoke of the hated English, Scotland would then have to go cap in hand to apply to subordinate itself again to that other government in Brussels – a condition of which, as a new applicant state, would be its need to sign up to the euro.