I still think that even with the recent upsurge, No will still come out on top.

 

However, assuming that Scotland does vote yes, assuming that the next election goes ahead, assuming that Labour wins the next election and is able to govern with a majority government, and would no longer have a majority government without being propped up by Scotland, one possible idea could be to have two governments running parallel ie - a government decided upon including Scotland's seats, and a second, "shadow" government that will run simultaneously but not be the official government until Scotland finally leaves. We've got something similar happening in NI, where there's currently a "shadow councilors" who were elected this year who won't officially take over until 2015 when the amount of councils is reduced. Plus it means that, as suggested, Scotland isn't ready to leave the union in 2016, it wouldn't affect the smooth running of government.

 

There's probably some legal wranglings to be sorted out if that does happen, but it's a potential, albeit imperfect, solution.

I still think Scotland will vote No. I suspect that some people have been planning to vote Yes on the assumption that they will be on the losing side and can then say "Nothing to do with me" if things go badly thereafter. However, if faced with the prospect of a Yes vote, they might lose their nerve and vote No.

divorces can be messy things if one side or the other goes on a strop, and can take ages to resolve, and especially if one partner seems to think the kids need a regular income from the one who doesn't have access to the kids. :(

 

From a purely sensible approach, this is not the best time in the world to jump into going it alone, far better to wait 5 or 10 years and a recovered world economy and then have a more measured, phased approach to it planned out properly in advance. The Yes vote might be less worrisome to doubters in that event.