I wrote this on Monday evening:
The Scottish Question
If you were de-merging a FTSE 100 company from the stock market you would have to jump through
a collection of hoops and regulations with most of this action being played out in the public domain.
If you want to de-merge a country from the United Kingdom all you have to do is hold a single referendum - true it helps to have a bill passed - but after that there's nothing. No due diligence, no joint working committees, no agreement on currencies, no absolute certainties on European sovereignty, a major and serious squabble over oil rights, no clear understanding over trident and so on and so on.
How on earth have we allowed this situation to arise? Scotland may yet vote Yes because she is tired of being pushed around by the English but to do so without these answers or a road map is frankly potty. The legal fees to settle all these issues if a Yes vote is successful will be in the billions of pounds and take a decade or more to resolve. This could lead to a run on the new Scottish currency with demands for help from the Bank of England. This really demonstrates how little thought has gone in to this referendum.
For the record, the constitutional settlement for the UK in this century should have been four lower houses representing England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland and an elected upper house or Senate representing the four nations equally with responsibility for Climate Change, the foreign office (including DfID) and some Treasury issues. All else could be delegated to the lower houses. Underneath these houses would be unitary authorities and an end to district councils. MEPs would no longer go to Strasbourg for a week every month (this may end anyway) but have to come back to Senate where they would sit and give an account of themselves. I always was a dreamer.