Devolution has given power to politicians, not people. Independence won’t change that

Gordon Brown has spoken, and the unionist parties are in agreement: if there’s a ‘no’ vote then more powers will be given – we’re told – ‘to Scotland’. There’ll be another commission and another Scotland Act. This so-called Devo Max should have been offered six months ago; to offer it in the last few days of the campaign smacks of panic.

By moving more towards Salmond’s territory, the unionists conceded the premise: that more powers to the Edinburgh political elite is somehow the same as more powers to ‘Scotland’. And who could be against more power to Scotland? Not a single party, it seems, is questioning the premise: that the more the MSPs get up to, the better for Scotland. In this way, the separatists win the argument.

But power going to Edinburgh politicians is a very different thing than power going ‘to Scotland’. And I write with the zeal of the convert: I was, once, an ardent advocate of devolution and argued with room-emptying conviction that Scotland’s innate political genius was bound to create a parliament more advanced than Westminster.