I watched a very interesting documentary recently on Scotland’s greatest victory over the English at Bannockburn. The English were unlucky having the hopeless Edward II conducting the battle. Had it been his father, the mighty and illustrious Edward I – the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ – things might have turned out very differently, despite us having our equally illustrious Robert the Bruce. It would have been an interesting contest. Alex Salmond might have hoped that his newly enfranchised sixteen-year-olds might have felt a bit of angst and voted his way in the coming referendum but my gut feeling, as a Scot, tells me that he is going to be disappointed in what Scots generally will decide to do. Untangling a marriage which has last 300 years will prove unbelievably difficult, not to say expensive. And for what? The 53m English with their City of London could probably bear the cost, but could the 6m Scots?

What saddens me is that all the arguments which have been bandied back and forth have been on nuts and bolts issues. But what about the appeal to the heart? We have bled together across a thousand battlefields, blood brothers in the ruest sense of the world; we have built together an empire greater than all others which went before; our scientists and engineers have fashioned the world in which we live with their Industrial Revolution and our poets and writers have thrilled it with a language which is set to be the lingua franca of all mankind. Are we to walk away from all this?

It seems to me that it is low and base motives which are the drivers for Scottish independence, though Alex Salmond likes, with his weasel words, to dress it up as otherwise. But Prime Minister Salmond sounds good, doesn’t it… ? And soon it would be President, once the dust has settled. That would sound even better. And let’s not forget all the baubles he would be handing down to his minions from the Palace of Holyrood House. God would be in His heaven and smarmy Alex would end up making ever more implausible excuses to his people as the years went by for the rotten outcome of it all and the likely penury he had plunged them into. Meantime the English, with their rejuvenated economy, their break with welfarism, their highly educated kids and their fracking bonanza would be heading off into the sunset, but sad nonetheless.