What George Osborne should learn from the Scottish ‘yes’ campaign

George Osborne will give his speech in a few minutes, and we’ll analyse it straight after. But I’d like to pick up on something he said this morning on Radio 4. It was an aside, a claim that

For the first time in my lifetime, the march of the separatists in Scotland has been reversed

This is, of course, not quite true – the SNP have been pushed into reverse many times. Depressingly they tend to bounce back, stronger than ever. After devolution, it looked as if their fox had been shot. After Salmond quit the first time, they looked like a quaint irrelevance. Yet just eleven days ago the ‘yes’ campaign won 45pc of the vote in a separation referendum, more than many unionists (like me) would ever have thought possible – driven, to a depressingly large extent, by despair with and contempt for the political status quo. Much of it well-founded.

A deep wound has been exposed in Scotland, and it will take some time to heal.