Hamish Macdonell

The BBC should probably think about issuing a public warning before it starts broadcasting the Commonwealth Games from Glasgow tonight. Something along the lines of ‘viewers of a nervous disposition should look away now (and for the next two weeks)’. That should cover it. Why? Because, for some English viewers, the coverage from Glasgow 2014 might be more than a bit unsettling. Here we are, just eight weeks from the referendum on Scottish independence and our screens are suddenly going to be filled with kilts, Saltires and songs dedicated to sending the English ‘home tae think again’.

There really isn’t much time left. From today, there are just nine and a half weeks until we go to the polls in the independence referendum. Also today, we have the latest ICM poll for Scotland on Sunday. The main figures are: Yes 34 per cent (down two points), No 45 per cent (up two) and don’t know 21 per cent (unchanged). If the don’t knows are excluded, the figures are Yes 43 per cent (down two), No 57 per cent (up two). [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/Z2duc/index.html"] Suddenly, that nine-and-a-half week window looks pretty small for the Yes camp. It means that Alex Salmond and his colleagues have just 66 days to overturn what has become a stubbornly immoveable lead for Better Together. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.

You can’t put a price on freedom. Well now, it seems, you can: or rather, one senior academic has done so and his verdict? Scottish independence will cost £200 million. On the surface, Professor Patrick Dunleavy’s conclusions on the set-up costs for an independent Scotland look good for the Nationalists. After all, that £200 million is remarkably close to the figure Alex Salmond has been throwing around for the last week or so and some considerable distance from the £2.7 billion figure the Treasury has been bandying around. In fact, Prof Dunleavy’s report (which was published today) makes the Treasury look pretty foolish and more than a bit amateurish. For weeks, Danny Alexander has been warning of set-up costs of £2.

Another day another poll or, rather, another day and we have another two polls on independence. Scotland on Sunday today published an ICM poll which found support for Yes on 45 per cent and support for No on 55 per cent, a gap of ten points (once don’t knows had been excluded). But, most importantly what this means is that the gap between the two sides has narrowed by six points in the last month. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/mG0gU/index.html​"] According to ICM, the Yes side has gone up by three points since mid May while the No camp has gone down by three points. ICM has always maintained a good reputation for the accuracy and sagacity of its polling so this one cannot be underestimated. It definitely suggests that Alex Salmond and Co.

All through this referendum campaign, there have been two battles: one has been in the open. This has generally been courteous and respectful. But the other battle has been hidden under the cloak of internet anonymity – and it has been vile, nasty and bigoted. Occasionally, these campaigns have collided and when this has happened, it has all got very messy indeed. That is exactly what happened today. Today’s tale of spin doctors, Labour activists and cyberbullying appears to be a bit of a beltway story but bear with me, it is really very important and tells us a lot about where the whole campaign is going. First, we have to scroll back just a little way, back to Monday morning in Glasgow and Better Together’s 100-days-to-go launch.

In a sense it could be the political version of the law of unintended consequences. There is Nigel Farage insisting that he is a British unionist, that he opposes Scottish nationalism and does not want to see Scottish independence. Yet success for Farage and Ukip in the Euro elections this week could possibly do more to hasten the break-up of the UK than almost anything else. That is the implication of a startling new poll published in the Scotsman this morning. ICM found that almost one in five Scots were more likely to vote Yes in the independence referendum if Ukip does well this week. A total of three in five of those asked said Ukip success would make no difference to their choice in the independence referendum and 14 per cent said they did not know.

If you are going to declare a clear political affiliation, you might as well do it big. In cricketing terms, if you are going to slash at the ball, slash hard — and that is exactly what the Sunday Herald has done this morning. 'Sunday Herald says Yes,' is the front page headline above an illustration by artist and Nationalist Alasdair Gray. Page one is the declaration and page three is the explanation. The whole of page three is devoted to an editorial setting out the reasons for the Sunday Herald’s decision to come out for the Nats. It is a pretty good and well-argued exposition of the Yes case, acknowledging the potential problems of independence but concluding that the referendum is 'the chance to remake our society in a more equal, inclusive, open and just way'.

Politicians always manage to take some crumbs of comfort from opinion polls but, if you are Alistair Darling, it would be difficult to find anything positive in the dramatic new poll published by Scotland on Sunday this morning. According to the poll, by ICM, the No camp’s lead has shrunk to either three or four percentage points – depending on whether the ‘don’t knows’ are counted. Ladbrokes has responded by cutting its odds on Scottish independence to 9/4, the shortest in its history. The overall ICM/SoS figures are No 42 per cent (down four points on last month), Yes 39 per cent (unchanged on last month) and ‘don’t knows’ 19 per cent, up four on last month.

When is a conference not a conference? When it’s a rally. Sitting in the hall listening to Alex Salmond this afternoon, it was hard to ignore the feeling that this SNP Spring Conference was about as far away from a party conference as it was possible to get. It really was a political rally – and quite a scary one too. The warm-up acts for the Scottish First Minister consisted of folk singers from the Hebrides singing ‘it’s our country’ and a group of shouty actors putting on extracts from a pro-independence play which will premiere in Edinburgh this summer.

Look up complacency in the dictionary and the chances are you will find a picture of a Scottish unionist next to it. For months – no, make that years – politicians at the sharp end of the fight against Scottish Nationalism have been warning about the dangers of complacency. But they might as well have been mumbling platitudes about the weather for all the effect it has had. The unionist side has been complacent, there is no doubt about that. Many in the anti-independence camp seem to have forgotten what this cause means to Alex Salmond and the SNP. They seem to have forgotten that this is all the Nats care about. It is what they have working for all their lives. They are believers, more than that they are evangelists.

English Labour leaders tend to find Scottish party conferences difficult. The Scots tend to be more old-fashioned, unreconstructed and left-wing than their English colleagues which can make it difficult for English party leaders to gauge the mood when they come north. But Ed Miliband actually managed to get through his address to the Scottish Labour Party conference without any major problems this afternoon, primarily because he managed to adapt his One Nation slogan to fit the independence debate. Miliband has been banging on about One Nation for two years now with few people having any idea what he means. But when he refers to the independence debate, the concept suddenly has meaning – and this is what he concentrated on today.

Just occasionally in politics, the mask slips and political parties reveal what they really are – rather than what they would like us to believe they are. Today in Edinburgh we experienced one of those moments. Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour Leader, unveiled her plans for ‘devo plus’ for Scotland – if Scots vote No in September. We expected something technical focusing on the new powers the Scottish Parliament would be gifted by a Labour government at Westminster. Instead, we got something fundamentally red in tooth and claw. Indeed, Lamont could not have taken a harder socialist approach had she grabbed a red flag and waved it from the rooftop of the Scottish Parliament building.

Scotland will get more powers – including control over taxes – if Scots vote No in September. That was the message David Cameron took to the Scottish Conservative Party at its annual conference in Edinburgh today. The Prime Minister has come under fire from the Scottish Nationalists who have claimed that the only way Scots can guarantee more powers is to vote Yes. In a clear attempt to undermine this argument, the Prime Minister went further than he has ever done before by promising to devolve more power from Westminster to Holyrood if Scots vote No. He said: ‘The Nationalists want people to believe that this is the end of the line for devolution: do or die, separate or just stick with the status quo. This is wrong.

The independence campaign could be over now. The Yes campaign could be all but destroyed with six months to go before the vote. The unionists have it within their power to do this, yet they choose not to do so for the simple – and apparently intractable – reason of narrow party politics. This morning the Lib Dem grandee Sir Menzies Campbell will unveil plans to try to forge ‘common ground’ between the three unionist parties on more powers for the Scottish Parliament. Sir Ming knows that if he can get Labour and the Tories to agree with him, then a tri-party agreement on more powers will effectively kill off the nationalist threat then and there. Just look at the results of the TNS poll commissioned by Sir Tom Hunter earlier this year.

In politics, as in comedy, timing is everything. It is worth bearing this in mind when considering George Osborne’s ‘you can’t keep the pound’ speech and what has happened since. There were many (including some senior Lib Dems) who were quick to criticise the Chancellor after he ruled out a shared Sterling zone with a independent Scotland earlier this month. Alistair Carmichael, the Scottish Secretary, even went public to suggest it may well have been ‘wrong from a tactical point of view’ to goad the Nats in this way, particularly as the Yes camp received a noticeable surge in support as a result. But it now appears as if there was a clear calculating method in Osborne’s approach.

Ask any election strategist and they’ll tell you that momentum is everything. For the past 18 months, the No campaign has had all the momentum in the referendum debate. The Yes camp were becalmed, the No side had everything going for it and (let’s be honest) there was more than a hint of complacency on the unionist side. Well that there was should have been blown out of the water by what has happened over the last couple of weeks. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the ground has shifted in the independence debate. The Yes camp has not bounced into a lead or anything like that, but it has started to make progress.

Personally, I’m now waiting for the Queen to get involved. After all, there’s not much left of Alex Salmond’s independence-but-not-independence blueprint that is left intact. First it was his ‘we’re going to share the pound in a Sterling zone’ claim. That was ruled out by George Osborne (and Ed Balls and Danny Alexander) last week. Then it was his ‘independence in Europe’ claim, and that was dismantled by Jose Manuel Barroso today. The only pillar of Salmond’s grand ‘everything’s-going-to-remain-the-same-only-different’ scheme which remains in place is a shared monarchy. So it can’t be long before Her Majesty also intervenes and says: 'Do you know what?

Could it be Bodie and Doyle? Perhaps Starsky and Hutch? Morse and Lewis? Whoever provided the inspiration, someone in Downing Street has clearly been watching too many old TV cop shows because what George Osborne's performance today was the final part of an old-fashioned good cop, bad cop routine. Last week David Cameron stayed in London to 'love-bomb' the Scots (as the Nats described it).'Please, please don’t leave,' was his message, 'We really love you lots.' That was part one, the good cop routine. Today we had part two, the bad cop bit. The Chancellor didn’t stay in London. He came to Edinburgh and was hard, nasty and belligerent.'Go independent if you want to,' was his message, 'But you can’t have the pound, so forget it.

I got a text from a mischievous friend in London this morning. ‘David Cameron has asked me to ask you not to leave the UK. We would miss you all awfully if you did and the Olympics were jolly fun with you on board,’ it said. I don’t think this was quite what the Prime Minister had in mind when he decided to appeal to the English, Welsh and Northern Irish to use their powers of persuasion to get us Scots to stay in the Union. But if that wasn’t what he wanted, then what was it? The Prime Minister’s big speech on the Union today is both interesting and difficult for a Scottish audience to hear.