Alex Massie Alex Massie

Who will fill a coward’s grave? 100 Days to decide Scotland’s future

In the new Scotland people may be able to count. Until then we will endure nonsense like yesterday’s hoopla claiming there were 100 days until the referendum when there were, in fact, 101.

Peevishness aside, the campaign now enters its final stages. Not before time, you may think. You would not be alone in reckoning so. For every person energised by the campaign (and many folk have been) there’s at least one thirsting for it to end.

Not that it will, of course. If the Yes side wins more than 40 per cent of the vote (and especially it it takes more than 45 per cent) this thing will rumble on and on. Until, as one nationalist put it to me recently, “we win”.

As matters stand – which is to say, if the referendum were held tomorrow – Scotland would vote No. Even the high heid yins in the Yes campaign admit that. But they cling to the hope that the No vote is soft. That Scots can be persuaded to set out on a fresh course. They insist there are many more undecided voters than people think, many people who are telling pollsters that they will vote No but secretly hanker for a reason to vote Yes.

Not so fast, pal, Unionists insist. The undecideds are much more likely to vote No than Yes. If you’ve not been persuaded to back independence yet what else can the Nationalists do to persuade you? Besides, senior Unionists say, many No voters are bashful types still in the closet. This, they think, is like 1992 all over again. Just as some people hesitated to tell pollsters they intended to vote Tory back then, so some Scots are reluctant to admit they’re voting for the Union this September.

This is, admittedly, all fairly unknowable. It’s true that in middle-class dinner-party Scotland no-one will look at you oddly if you announce you’re voting No but I fancy there are some voters who kinda think it’s a shame they’re going to vote No and who wish to keep pretty quiet about it.

Of course there are, respond the wilder Nats.

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