Do you want Scots to stay in the UK? Say why – and be published in the Spectator

It’s extraordinary to think that we could be 12 days away from the dissolution of our country. The union of Scotland and England, perhaps the most successful and consequential alliance in history, could be ended – and for the worst of reasons. The Scottish National Party has been campaigning hard, and campaigning well. Alex Salmond has excelled in depicting his enemy as a cold-hearted England (and the people they vote for) whose values are so irreconcilable with those of Scotland that the only answer is the partition of (and, ergo, the end of) Britain.

As a Scot with three English children, I loathe this agenda more than I can say. But it has been a mistake for unionists to judge nationalist arguments as too bizarre to resonate. As Jim Murphy recently observed, there is an energy of nationalism which has not been matched by the energy of unionism. When you hear Ed Miliband in Lanarkshire, wittering on about his energy price freezes, you can see why the passion – and the momentum – is with the nationalists.