Uk politics

The Lib Dems have just launched the final leg of their campaign against Scottish independence, which is a poster van with Charles Kennedy's head emblazoned across it and three of the United Kingdom's greatest achievements: the NHS, the pound and the BBC. It's part of their 'sunshine strategy' to talk up the benefits of the Union in the final few days, and the four Lib Dems who launched this van - Danny Alexander, Charles Kennedy, Jo Swinson and Willie Rennie - argued that they had been saying all sorts of lovely sunshiny things about the United Kingdom all along, but they just weren't as well-reported as all the warnings.

David Cameron has just delivered one of the best speeches of his career in Aberdeen. It was emotional, sincere, clear. The Prime Minister pleaded with Scots to stay in the United Kingdom. It ranged from warnings that this would be a permanent separation - 'when people vote on Thursday they are not just voting for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren and the generations beyond'- to powerful images of something the peoples of the Union have built being torn apart: 'For the people of Scotland to walk away now would be like painstakingly building a home – and then walking out the door and throwing away the keys. So I would say to everyone voting on Thursday, please remember. This isn’t just any old country. This is the United Kingdom. This is our country.

This week's Spectator cover piece is written by our readers. Here are some more letters to Scottish voters, explaining why our United Kingdom should stay together. I come from the Isles of Scilly, which is as far away from Scotland as it’s possible to get whilst remaining in the UK. Flung out into the Atlantic ocean, 28 miles off Land’s End, I have always thought of my islands as part of the great Celtic fringe of this Kingdom. All I can do is plead with the people of Scotland to look beyond an opportunity to 'shake off Tory rule' and to consider instead how fortunate it is to be born British, and how much Scotland means to the rest of this country.

Who will be relieved and reassured when they read this weekend's polls on how Thursday's independence referendum will go? Well, it looks like neither camp has much to celebrate as the polls are all over the place - which means that anything could happen in just a few days' time. So here's what we know so far. Opinium has 'No' with a six point lead at 53 per cent, with 'Yes' on 47 per cent. Meanwhile an ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph puts 'Yes' eight points ahead. A Panelbase poll comes out later tonight. It's also worth noting this post from John Curtice, which says the ICM finding 'while not wholly disregarded, should clearly be viewed with caution' because of a smaller sample size.

Anyone who thinks that the latest YouGov poll on Scottish independence, which shows the 'No' camp with a six-point lead over 'Yes' at 52 per cent to 48 per cent (once don't-knows are excluded) is getting a little ahead of themselves. It is significant that this is the same pollster who sent Westminster into panic on Sunday with its poll putting 'Yes' in the lead. But the only effect this poll should have on the 'No' campaign in the final days is to stop a blind, useless sort of panic where bad decisions are made and colleagues brief against one another before the final result.

Even when it is at peace, the Conservative party deals in hypotheticals all of which involve David Cameron being ousted in one way or another. That's why backbenchers have been wargaming what will happen to David Cameron if Scotland votes 'Yes' next week. It's why 1922 Committee executive members have been calling fellow MPs, or pouncing on them in the corridors (one spent a good long time lurking in one particular corridor in Parliament yesterday, snaring backbenchers) to find out what they would do if the worst happens in the referendum. Everyone agrees that a 'Yes' vote would be seriously damaging to the Prime Minister and that it would lead to a vote of no confidence. Serial troublemakers are making detailed plans for this to happen.

Tonight brings the first morale boost for the No campaign in a wee while, a Daily Record poll has them 53-47 ahead. Including don’t knows, the numbers are No 47.6%, Yes 42.4% and don’t know 9.9%. A while back, a 53-47 poll would have been regarded as alarming by the No camp. But a week is a long time in politics and tonight’s numbers will be seen as a reassuring sign that a Salmond victory is not inevitable and that independence doesn’t have unstoppable momentum. Particularly reassuring for the No side is that the number of Labour voters backing independence has fallen, which suggests that the bleeding on that front has been staunched. We’ll have to see what the polling effect, if any, is of the visit from the three UK party leaders is.

Here are a number of things that the Westminster parties' response to the narrowing Scottish independence polls have definitely not been. Absolutely definitely not. 1. A cobbled-together response The three parties deciding to announce the new powers for Scotland and timetable for the handover of those powers in the event of a 'No' vote may, to the untrained eye, have looked like a last-minute, last-ditch attempt to reverse the fortunes of the Better Together campaign. But no, argued Nick Clegg today when he sat before the the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. 'I don't accept the characterisation this has all been sort of cobbled together at the last minute.