No. Yes.

…Scotland Office, Whitehall

When I was at university, each was the leading light in a student political group: one Labour, one Tory, one SNP. Becoming one of the most active members of the Labour group and watching these three peas in a pod at close quarters opened my young eyes to how politics works. All three were skilled at playing the game of party politics. All three went on to the House of Commons.

What drives them to make party politics their career and life is not what they believe in. What drives them is the urge to win the game - to win a vote on a committee, a nomination, a public election, a position, promotion, power.

The Labour one is still a backbench MP. The Tory one became Secretary of State for Scotland before being washed away in the 1997 anti-Tory Tsunami and washed up in the House of Lords. The SNP one voluntarily quit the Commons for the new parliament in Edinburgh and is on the brink of leading Scotland to independence.

I was opposed to the Labour government’s ill-fated devolution proposals in the late 1970s and couldn’t bring myself to vote Labour in 1997 in part because of the party’s long-standing commitment to resurrect them. Devolution always was half-baked, a politically expedient ploy to try and stop the nationalists winning the game.

The ‘West Lothian question’ became reality with the new Scottish Parliament. The Blair government couldn’t have imposed its health and education policies on England without the votes of its Scottish Labour MPs. Those Scottish MPs had no say on health and education policies in Scotland, where their Labour MSP counterparts in the Scottish Parliament implemented different policies.

The West Lothian question came into even sharper relief later with the absurdity of someone representing a Scottish constituency becoming prime minister and taking the lead on health and education policies in England while having no power over those in Scotland.

Even if the SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland loses the referendum, promises of more power for the Scottish Parliament already represent a win. Independence will come sooner or later. Make it sooner. Vote ‘Yes' on 18th September.