Alex Salmond has already lost — if the Edinburgh Festival is anything to go by

Scotland’s on a knife-edge. Like all referendum-watchers at the Edinburgh Festival I grabbed a ticket for The Pitiless Storm, a drama about independence, which attracts big crowds every lunchtime at the Assembly Rooms.

The play draws its inspiration from the passion and fury of Red Clydeside. David Hayman, an actor and lifelong leftie, plays a Glaswegian trade unionist who reflects on the troubles of Scottish socialism as the referendum approaches. Some of his rhetoric captures the best of the independence movement. ‘We’re not leaving the union, we’re joining the world.’ And he flavours his optimism with a dash of local irony. ‘We don’t know what the weather’s going to be like in half an hour, let alone what kind of country we could be in ten years’ time.’ But he also indulges in self-pitying nostalgia. He sees independence as a rite of exoneration and atonement, a chance for Scotland to acquit itself of its involvement in the Blair government, and in the subsequent policies of the coalition. All the blunders and compromises of the past — from the Iraq war to the bedroom tax — will be purged in the fires of liberation.

The Edinburgh audience seemed to tolerate and perhaps even to endorse this misty-eyed revisionism. After the show, David Hayman invited questions from the floor, and the first contribution came from an Englishwoman who spoke in a jaunty Radio 4 accent. ‘Britain will be sorely diminished if you leave,’ she declared, as if opening a fête. ‘Please don’t go.’ The audience, rather than hooting with derision, broke into warm and prolonged applause. Then a hoary old Scots Nat climbed to his feet. ‘The yes campaign has made the better arguments…’ he began. He was stopped in his tracks. ‘But we’ll lose the vote.’ This interruption came not from the stalls but from the stage.