I salute the wisdom of young Scots on independence (they’re voting No, by the way)

It’s a constant theme of this column that today’s young need to stop whingeing about their prospects and get on with making their own future. But a quick north-of-the-border tour as official campaigning kicks off for the Scottish referendum persuades me that the pessimism of the generation about to enter the world of work is for once well justified — and may play a key role in averting the potential economic disaster of independence.

When SNP leader Alex Salmond chose to give 16- and 17-year-olds a say in September’s poll, he must have presumed that teenage Scots — if they could be bothered to vote at all — would be swayed by the romantic nationalism and anti-English fire of the Yes campaign. Not so, it turns out. A survey last year (an update will be published shortly) by Edinburgh University academics of more than a thousand 14- to 17-year-old school pupils found 60 per cent on the No side to 21 per cent Yes and 19 per cent undecided; interest in the issue was high, and there was no obvious pattern of kids parroting parents’ voting intentions.