The First Line

Peter Wilby's New Statesman column will never have been more irrelevant when it appeared online a week after its appearance in print:

The happy outcome of the referendum, campaign - unforeseen, I admit, by me - is the humiliation of David Cameron, forced now to rely on his reviled prime ministerial predecessor to rescue the No campaign.

In the constitution of the party he leads, the first line says it "shall be known as the Conservative and Unionist Party".

The "unionist" part goes back to 1886 when Liberal Unionists broke away from the Liberal Party to form an alliance with the Tories against Irish home rule. The two merged in 1912.

In Scotland, however, there was no Conservative Party until 1965, just a Unionist Party that always voted with the Tories at Westminster.

It was the party of the Protestant working class when sectarian divisions in urban Scotland were almost as intense, if not as violent, as in Ulster.

It delivered votes - including allied parties, it got a Scottish majority in 1955 - partly because, being distinctively Scottish, it seemed more nationalist than a Labour Party that favoured a strong central state. 

Now, after the imposition of the poll tax, council house sales, privatisation and benefit cuts, the Tories appear more centralist.

As most current Tory MPs don't care about history, least of all their own party's, Cameron may survive the absurdity of a "unionist" Prime Minister almost (or, if I'm wrong, actually) losing the Union.

Indeed, backbench Eurosceptics may calculate that, because he's a serial loser, they should keep him in place to lead another disastrous No (to leaving the EU) campaign in 2017.

He goes on:

If Scotland does leave the UK, would things feel very different? Probably not.

Its education and legal systems, banknotes (which, whatever is said about legal tender, most English shopkeepers won't accept), football and rugby are already separate from England's.

Unlike Ireland, it has neither widely supported indigenous games nor a widely spoken native language, but thousands aren't suddenly going to speak Gaelic or play hurling upon independence.

More importantly, it is hard to imagine Scotland breaking the straitjacket imposed by international capital, which demands low wages, minimal regulation, reduced taxes and privatisation of public services.

Even Scandinavia, with its social-democratic traditions, hasn't escaped; Sweden, for instance, has for-profit schools.

As for border controls, I don't see why Ed Miliband thinks they would be necessary for Scotland but not for Ireland.

Scotland, as a new entrant to the EU, would be obliged to join Schengen. That is why.