The general reaction in Westminster and the City of London to the Scottish referendum has been one of relief.  This is a big mistake.

First, and fundamentally, votes of 45/55 do not resolve issues for a generation, or even for very long.  Anyone who participated in the debate in Scotland over the last few months will have been impressed by the depth of real public interest that emerged, but also by the strength of feeling on both sides, which by the end had sometimes degenerated into bullying.  These are not indicators of a debate that is settled.

The commitments, hurriedly advanced in the late stages of the campaign, to implement some version of ‘devo max’ – extended powers for the Scottish government and parliament – are likely to turn out to be a bust.  The commitments were, and remain, strikingly free of detail.  The division of 1997 between responsibilities devolved to Edinburgh and those reserved to the UK government was not a random choice.  The powers devolved were the powers that are easy to devolve.  Some remained at Westminster because instituting separate regimes of – for example – pension provision to a small island with mobile population is horribly complicated.  Indeed the no campaign rightly drew attention to these difficulties which would have arisen in implementing these measures if the voters had chosen independence.  The difference is that independence involves handing responsibility for the problem to a new government which has strong incentives to work them out.   David Cameron’s plans give responsibility for working them out to officials in London who have very little interest in ceding control.  In particular, the UK Treasury will resist – and not without reason – ceding real control over tax policy or fiscal judgments to anyone.  The result in practice is likely to be a ‘devo max’ package that decentralises a few peripheral aspects of welfare and tax policy – like attendance allowance and air passenger duty – and imposes yet another complex formula which appears to give the Scottish Parliament greater control over income tax without really doing so.

This would matter more if the demand for additional devolved powers were merely a demand for specific measures.  But the clamour for more autonomy is not motivated by specific concerns over the design of housing benefit.  This was revealed when the claim that the UK government might undermine Scotland’s health service became a central issue in the later stages of the ‘yes’ campaign.  The protesters did not care, and perhaps some did not know, that health is already a devolved function and that a decision to abolish the NHS in Scotland would be made in Edinburgh not London.

If you ask people in Scotland what different tax and welfare policies they want, you find they do not want different policies, they want more generous policies.  The Scottish government’s white paper on what independence would be like mostly consisted of a list of things that the Scottish government already has the power, but not the money, to do – and devo max is not going to change that.  The cry of more devolution is a cry of resentment against a political system that is perceived as remote and hostile, from people who fear that they are losing control over their own lives, rather than a desire for specific administrative reform.

Despite the Prime Minister’s efforts to place his proposals within a context of overall constitutional reform, no one doubts that the debate is entirely motivated by the special position of Scotland.  That has two important implications.  One is the un____ difficulty of reconciling that position with the interests and expectations of the remainder of the UK.  The ‘West Lothian question’ – why should legislators selected in Scotland have jurisdiction over policy matters in England but English legislators no say over the same matters in Scotland – has no good, and certainly no easy, answer, which is why it has remained unanswered for four decades.  The very different complexion of Scottish politics from that of the UK as a whole gives urgency to that question, and fuels the understandable resentment of English Conservative Members of Parliament.  The fiscal settlement ‘ the ‘Barnett formula’ – which tacitly gives Scotland its share of oil revenue anyway cannot survive the scrutiny and demand for transparency it will now receive.  

The ‘no’ side never fully grasped that the central argument of the ‘yes’ campaign is that Scotland is different.  It follows that every measure which respects, far less emphasises or extends, that difference gives more strength to those who favour independence.  The creation of a Scottish Parliament, gave a platform to advocates of separatism – that is how the referendum came about in the first place.  And the more certainty about its outcome has always been that a close result, whatever its direction, was a bad result.  It is.  Those who argued in 1997 that devolution to Scotland was a slippery slope towards independence were – for better or worse – absolutely right.  Last week, the Scottish nationalist campaign lost a battle.  But the outcome makes it look very likely that they have won their war.