As though it had passed through the hands of a newspaper headline writer, the Scottish question has become very short. "Should Scotland be an independent country?" are the six words that Scottish voters will say yes or no to in autumn next year, which, in referendums, may set a record for brevity. In 1980, the people of Quebec faced a question that ran to more than a hundred words and included three semi colons and two dashes, as well as the phrase "in other words", which, in other words, is the kind of sentence the late Bernard Levin used to write when he was amusing himself in his Times column by trying to set a world record for sentence length. All the Quebecois were being asked to do was to give their government the mandate to negotiate a new relationship with the rest of Canada. The result of these negotiations – sovereignty was the object – would need to be approved by another referendum. Perhaps this exhausting thought alone was enough to make 60% of voters say no. Fifteen years later, when the question was put again, the question was trimmed from 108 words to 43. This time there were many more yes votes but the no vote won only by the thinnest of margins – 1.16%. Though it would be foolish to argue cause and effect, the temptation is to imagine that brevity encourages assent.

The Scottish question has been on a similar journey. Originally, the Scottish National Party envisaged a 31-word statement, "The Scottish Parliament should negotiate a new settlement with the British government, based on the proposals set out in the white paper, so that Scotland becomes a sovereign and independent state", to which people would vote "Yes I agree" or "No I disagree". This became "Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?" until the Electoral Commission objected to the opening phrase, saying it tended to invite a positive response, and suggested the six-word version that the Scottish government was happy to accept and the unionist opposition has made no great fuss over, though "separation" rather than "independence" is the way it prefers to portray the nationalist cause.

Because of the connotations that line up behind it, independence is the more attractive word. Separation suggests divorce, loneliness, egg yolks versus egg whites, yearning, distance and twin-bedded hotel rooms. Independence, on the other, summons up principled declarations written by men in wigs, the pursuit of human happiness, the resolve of Thomas Jefferson and the humility of MK Gandhi. The young celebrate independence when they achieve it; the old and infirm are pitied when they lose it. One of the most brilliant slogans ever devised for a newspaper was the Saatchi line "The Independent. It is. Are you?", with its flattering appeal to those who imagined themselves strong-minded and clear-eyed. Connect this adjective to the noun "country" and the phrase looks like a winner in a nation that hasn't been fully empowered as a state.

And yet the early evidence suggests that the framing of the question refuses to be more helpful to the nationalist side than the other. A poll using exactly the same form of words, published six days ago in the Scottish edition of the Mail on Sunday, found that only 32% of a sample of 1,003 people said they would vote yes, while 47% said they would vote no. Of course, a differently worded question might have found even less favour, a thought that tends to be supported by the latest results of the annual Scottish Social Attitudes survey, published last month, which showed that support for independence fell last year to 23%, among the lowest figures since devolution. But in this poll the proposition has stayed the same since 1999: "Scotland should become independent, separate from the UK", the last four words adding (you might argue) the senses of risk and loss. The same survey also found that people had become more anxious about the prospect of independence – 59% were "quite" or "very" worried by it, compared to 45% in 2011 – while the proportions were even over whether Scotland's economy would improve or decline as a consequence.

On this evidence, Alex Salmond's government has a mountain of scepticism to climb before it can persuade a majority of the electorate that with independence will come the "thriving and successful European country, reflecting Scottish values of fairness and opportunity" that was promised this week by his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, in her preface to the plan that, if the referendum is won, will have Scotland celebrating its first independence day in March, 2016. The timescale looks astonishingly short. Within 17 months of a referendum in autumn next year, negotiations between the UK and Scottish governments will be expected to settle their respective shares of the national debt, overseas assets and North Sea oil revenue, the future of Trident, the eligibility of UK nationals for Scottish citizenship and other questions stretching from EU and UN membership to the governance of the BBC.

The advantages of such a rush for the pro-independence side is that it gives the impression of an unstoppable train, but there are disadvantages, too. The more a voter suspects the consequences of their vote will be complicated and expensive, the less inclined they may be to vote for change. A hurried negotiation may give advantage to London. In the Scottish Review online, a retired senior civil servant, James Aitken, describes how the Edinburgh-based government will also be disadvantaged with covert intelligence. "Because of the way Scottish independence can be perceived in Westminster as a 'threat' to the integrity, and hence the security, of the existing UK, the security services could be legitimately tasked to discover all they can about the Scottish negotiating position … It would be surprising if 'sleepers' have not been embedded [inside the Scottish government], ready to be activated as required."

If present trends in Scottish opinion continue, it will never come to that. The no vote will win; there need be no negotiations. My guess, however, is that present trends will not continue and that the vote will be very close. London as a political, social and financial phenomenon will become more and more alienating, as will the coalition government that lives there. Independence will develop in Scotland as the lifeboat option – a way back to a normal life, to jump into and forget about the angst over British destiny and punching above our weight. Salmond, after all, is a very able politician. Did we see him in public with Pauline Marois, the Quebec leader, when she came calling last week? No, a private meeting squeezed between bits of regular business was all he could afford her. Who wants to be seen with that narrow, ungenerous and (to the rest of Canada) irritating thing, a separatist?