James Forsyth

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.

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are combining forces and heading to Scotland tomorrow to make the case for the UK. Here's their joint statement: 'There is a lot that divides us - but there's one thing on which we agree passionately: the United Kingdom is better together. That’s why all of us are agreed the right place for us to be tomorrow is in Scotland, not at Prime Minister’s Questions in Westminster. We want to be listening and talking to voters about the huge choice they face. Our message to the Scottish people will be simple: "We want you to stay."' The presence of the three party leaders is meant to show that Westminster will deliver on its promises about further devolution to Scotland.

If Scotland does vote for separation—as the latest YouGov poll suggests it will, we’ll enter the most unpredictable political period in living memory. But before we start contemplating the consequences of a Yes vote, it is worth thinking about what is giving independence momentum in Scotland. It is not just being driven by nationalist fervour but by the same anti-politics sentiment that is riling politics right across the United Kingdom. Voters who are fed up with Westminster and disappointed by politics are seeing voting Yes as a chance to rip up the whole system and start again. Breaking up the United Kingdom is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of anti-politics.

It used to be said that loyalty was the Tory party’s secret weapon. But this supposed strength hasn’t been very apparent in recent years. Indeed, at times, it seems that the Tory party hasn’t quite recovered from the demons unleashed by Margaret Thatcher’s ouster twenty-odd years ago.   Douglas Carswell’s defection means that Westminster, when it is not panicking about the Scottish referendum, is chuntering about whether his move to Ukip is the harbinger of a bigger Tory split to come, one that The Spectator explores this week. Worryingly for the Tory loyalists, there are people on all sides of the party are preparing for this fight.  As one Tory MP tells me, ‘It has that civil war quality to it: people just want to harm the other side.

A few days ago, one would have expected the first PMQs of term to be a rowdy affair as Labour went for Cameron over the Carswell defection. But the recent, hideous events in Iraq have changed all that and today’s PMQs was instead a sober, statesmanlike affair which reflected well on both Cameron and Miliband.

Tonight brings a reminder that the Union is in real danger. A new YouGov poll has the No camp’s lead in the Scottish referendum down to just six points. Just a month ago, No had a 22 point lead with You Gov. This poll is particularly striking as YouGov’s polling has not been as favourable to Yes as that of other pollsters; this is Yes’s highest ever score with YouGov. Particularly worrying is that undecided voters are going Yes by a margin of two to one. If this poll is right about how much the gap has narrowed and the undecideds continue to break in the same way, then this referendum could come down to who has the better ground operation. It is, obviously, only those who live in Scotland who have a vote in this referendum.

David Cameron and the Tories’ electoral hopes are about to take a long walk on Clacton’s short pier. A poll in the Mail on Sunday today has Ukip on 64% and the Tories on 20%, a lead that suggests this contest is over before the writ has even been moved. So, Ukip are going to get their first MP. This means that the fracture on the right of British politics is a lot closer to becoming permanent, handing Labour the kind of inherent electoral advantage that the Tories enjoyed in the 1980s. This morning, the next election is Ed Miliband’s to lose. One of the striking things about the poll is that it reveals that not even Boris can save the Tories in Clacton. Cameron had hoped that his ‘star striker’ could get him out of this hole.

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, has been appointed the new European Council President. Tonight, Tusk has had warm words about how imperative it is that Britain’s concerns about the EU are addressed. As Open Europe reports, he called the possibility of an EU without Britain a “black scenario.”   Tusk’s appointment is a mixed blessing for David Cameron. On the one hand, Tusk comes from a non-Eurozone country meaning that he’ll be sympathetic to Britain’s desire for single market protections for the Eurozone outs. The Ukraine crisis has also reminded the Poles of how important Britain is in terms of stiffening the EU approach towards Russia; meaning that Tusk genuinely would be loath to see Britain leave.

Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip is a serious blow to the Tory party. Unlike so many other defectors, Carswell is not off because he has an axe to grind. This isn’t about his personal prospects but policy. What makes this defection all the more potent is that Carswell has been a major influence on contemporary Toryism. His Direct Democracy agenda is one of the more sizable parts of the whole Tory modernisation project and his Euroscepticism isn’t driven by some Pathé news view of Britain but by a view of how this country can succeed as a modern, free-trading nation. Indeed, the section in Carswell’s speech celebrating contemporary Britain is very Cameroon. So, a Tory party that can’t keep Carswell in the fold has a serious problem.

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP deputy leader, is busy claiming that post the Glasgow games the momentum will be with the Yes side in the referendum. But this claim is contradicted by the Survation poll in today’s Mail on Sunday which shows support for Yes marginally down on last month. The Yes campaign’s last best chance to gain the ‘big mo’ that it needs comes in Tuesday night’s debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling. Alex has written about why he doesn’t think this debate will be a game changer, but with a million Scots expected to tune in, Salmond isn’t going to have a better opportunity to try and turn things round. But the dilemma for Salmond is how to approach this debate.

From now until September 18th, the Scottish referendum will rightly dominate national politics. Tuesday night's debate between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond is the Yes campaign's last and best chance to gather the momentum it needs to pull off an improbable victory. But, as British Election Survey data shows, the result of the referendum is not a foregone conclusion. If the ‘undecideds’ keep breaking the same way, the result will be No 53.6 per cent, Yes 44.6 per cent. This is too close for comfort. But if Scotland votes No, attention will quickly shift to next May's UK election. It is a sign of how speeded-up our politics has become that David Cameron's political career could be over two years before his 50th birthday.

The future of Britain is at stake, but you wouldn't know it from how ITV is behaving. On Tuesday, STV will broadcast a live debate between Alex Salmond and the leader of the No campaign, Alistair Darling. This promises to be one of the pivotal moments in the referendum campaign.  But, depressingly, the only way anyone outside of Scotland will be able to watch it is on the internet via STV Player. The failure to put it on ITV across the whole of the UK reflects the failure to understand that, while only the residents of Scotland may have vote in the independence referendum, the result will affect all of us. If Scotland votes for independence, the rest of the UK will be much diminished. It won't be Great Britain anymore but little Britain.

David Ruffley has announced that he is standing down as an MP at the next election. Ruffley’s decision follows the story about him being cautioned by the police following a domestic incident with his partner going from being a local story to a national one, driven in large part by the indefatigable Guido Fawkes. Ruffley’s decision to resign has spared the Conservatives what would have been a difficult decision. On the one hand, there was the issue of domestic violence and its total unacceptability. On the other, there was the duty of care that the party owed an MP who has had some difficulties in the past few years. But the new chief whip Michael Gove has handled the issue adroitly and come up with the best possible solution to a very difficult problem.