The battle lines that are being drawn over Scotland

In the wrangling between Westminster and Holyrood over the referendum there are two big issues at stake, the date of the vote and —more importantly — the number of options on the ballot paper. Salmond, as he made clear on the Today Programme this morning, wants to have the referendum in autumn 2014 and have three options — the status quo, independence and ‘devo-max’ — on offer.
 
The reason Salmond wants ‘devo-max’ to be there is that he’s not confident he can get independence through this time round. Indeed, I suspect that Salmond’s ideal result would be Westminster resorting to the courts to stop a vote in Scotland allowing him to fan the flames of nationalism and avoid having a referendum that independence is likely to lose.
 
So, what should the coalition do now? The view of one influential Cabinet minister is that they should fold on the date to try and ensure that the referendum is a straight in or out one.