They don't know whodunnit. But they sure as hell know what he done. By suggesting a post-independence currency union was still on the table, the anonymous coalition mole who spoke to the Guardian on Friday has burrowed deep into the already shaky confidence of Better Together.

Deep enough for the Scotland secretary, Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dems' Dr No, to warn colleagues that the yes campaign was gathering momentum. You know things are serious when John Major is being winkled out to embark on a tartan charm offensive. Not to mention a brigade of northern English MPs being dispatched across the border to tell Scots they love them really. No really.

And all to reinvent a no campaign that has thus far much preferred the big stick to anything carrot-shaped. Numerous cabinet ministers have been making day trips to Scotland explaining why everything from the economy to defence will implode without the comfort blanket of the union. And watch out for your pension by the way.

Just as Scots await predictions of the killing of the first born, up pops the Master of the Polls, John Curtice, to opine that the self-styled Project Fear has been stirring up more irritation than insecurity.

And you have to say that a campaign slogan of "you're too wee, too poor and too stupid to cope" never had much going for it in the empathy stakes. What the parade of day-trippers seem to have not quite grasped is that devolution, now 15 years old, is not a destination but a process.

Over administrations of all political shades, Scotland has already chosen to make radically different policy choices within the parameters of the devolution settlement. State education has not gone down the route of academies and free schools. It has set its face against serial testing of young children. It has made a bid to tailor the product to the child rather than the converse.

The Curriculum for Excellence covers children from three to 18 and has four stated aims: to produce successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. While it has core subjects, it believes in the power of creativity to enhance both teaching and learning. The major arts funding body, Creative Scotland, in tandem with Education Scotland, has produced a Creative Learning Plan whose stakeholders include the General Teaching Council Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority.

This chimes with the views of the education secretary, Michael Russell, and culture secretary, Fiona Hyslop, who used the annual Talbot Rice lecture last year to extol the potential of the arts as a transformative experience. This was hard on the heels of Maria Miller's Westminster speech advising the cultural sector in England that it had to pay its way to survive.

The NHS in Scotland makes minimal use of private provision. The flagship Golden Jubilee hospital near Glasgow, originally built by Health Care International for use by wealthy overseas patients, was bought by the Scottish government as an NHS facility 12 years ago. It is now the main centre of excellence for heart and lung surgery and an acknowledged world leader in orthopaedics. It performed 30,000 procedures in its first year. By its tenth it was doing 300,000.

Scotland still suffers from enormous health inequalities and higher than average mortality rates related to alcohol and drug abuse and poor diet, which rose from the 1980s onwards. However, NHS Scotland's five-year strategy is aimed at reducing these through prevention focusing on tackling child poverty and youth unemployment.

The political parties in Scotland can still give sack-bound ferrets a run for their money on many topics, but they are as one on items such as the much-loathed bedroom tax, which all the major parties have pledged to ditch.

There is broad agreement on migration too. Scotland wants more migrants to populate its more remote regions, and harness the skills and talents of foreign graduates. Ukip barely registers on voting intentions.

All of which gives Better Together a slightly historical ring in a country that has long since grown apart from the world according to Westminster.