What does the establishment in meltdown look like? Increasingly like a sweaty bloke who stayed too long in the pub, bought some carnations from a garage on the way home and now insists on playing East 17’s Stay Another Day really loudly.

Tell Scotland you love her. Write her a little note and leave it under her pillow, says the Spectator. “Dear Scotland. Sorry we decimated your industry. We will make it up to you with a mini-break of your choosing. Love England.” That kind of thing?

Assorted celebs are being flown in to make the message clearer, because anyone who has ever written a pop song knows more about what is good for Scotland than the people of Scotland. I certainly ought to apologise for using these crappy marriage-type metaphors because actually the union does not work like a marriage. It’s more like long forgotten ex who we assumed held a candle for us but who we have basically ignored. Where was all this sentiment when parts of Scotland were being thrown on the scrapheap during the 80s and 90s? The decline of steel and shipbuilding was spoken about as necessary for the new kind of country we were to become. Whose country was now to make money by shifting money, not metal? The City of London, not the nation of Scotland. Now there is a dreadful English sentimentality for some mountains and lochs as though our local leisure facility is threatened with closure.

Much of the political class has gone a bit bonkers, sensing that they have left it too late to make their grand gesture. And they are right. Scotland is restless and which ever way the vote goes, this relationship is fundamentally altered.

A month ago Westminster did not care much about Scotland and nor did its clique of embedded journalists. A no vote was pretty much taken for granted. The threat to Britain, we have been repeatedly assured, was from outside: Brussels. That after all is the raison d’etre of Ukip. A couple of years ago I wrote of a coming sense of a new Englishness that is not rightwing at all. As long as it remains unspoken by progressives, it remains the province of the right. Any progressive party could see this and see the need for more accountable and localised democracy. The fact that Labour hasn’t and has chosen to line up with Cameron, Clegg and the entire establishment is a sign of its lack of vision. How did it think this would look?

For the yes vote to prove its point we only have to look at the no camp, half of them suddenly professing love for a place they have deliberately avoided.

Now the no camp has gone beserk. Boris Johnson of course says it will be catastrophic, with a yes vote meaning “we will all be walking around like zombies”. Really? I can’t wait. Democracy is a moveable feast for the unionists. Let’s not talk about the Troubles in Ireland or the deliberate impoverishment of Wales in this glorious United Kingdom of the home counties. It is now farcical that we are told that the Queen is worried, though she is “neutral”. It’s possible she is worried – she goes to Scotland more than a lot of our politicians. After all, via the Crown Estates she owns vast chunks of it. And just on cue, a unionist foetus exists!



The case for independence has been made as it acted not as political Viagra but as a mass stimulant for men, women and young people who debate admirably. To see the establishment so unprepared for this is significant. It reminds me slightly of the unease for the few days after Diana died and no one knew quite what was happening. Of course that was contained and now all are concerned to present a sensible front. But underneath it is chaos. And rather grubby.

George Osborne throwing in sweeteners is akin to trying to cancel your mobile contract and suddenly being offered free texts and an upgrade.

If I had a vote and was undecided, observing this newly desperate passion would certainly help me make up my mind. It’s not head v heart. What a patronising way to think about the accountability of governance.

Indeed, after all this love-bombing, England, if you love Scotland so much, let her go.