It had been coming for some time throughout the course of the campaign. Speculated about, leaked, openly declared, even ridiculed. But the formal announcement by the Tories, Labour, and the LibDems, last weekend of a solemn pledge substantially to enhance the powers of the Scottish devolved assembly and government in the event of a No was a tipping point. It was prompted by a poll which suggested for the first time that the slow surge of the Yes campaign had just produced a lead for the first time, lifting spirits on the one hand, injecting a note of desperation on the other. And desperate times require desperate measures.
The pledge, however, transformed the nature of the question being asked – no longer “independence or Westminster rule”, the question was now “independence or home rule” or, as many would see it, “how would you like your independence? Full-blooded or light?” “With risk, or without” “With all the trappings and dangers of statehood, out in the cold, alone, or in the warm, safe embrace of the Union”.
In this age of globalisation and interdependence, when states share their sovereignty willingly with organsiations like the EU, ECB, Nato, the UN ... is there anyway, in reality, any such thing as pure independence? Only degrees of independence.
The question was transmogrified into that third option the SNP leader Alex Salmond wanted on the ballot but was denied by Prime Minister David Cameron, a choice of so-called "devo-max".
In the circumstances what was remarkable, along with the wonderful 84 per cent turnout and the debate and sense of civic empowerment that touched every corner of Scotland, was how many still opted for the full-blooded version. One and a half million voices-plus to which Westminster should pay close attention, voices which will not be easily placated when backsliding on the promises emerges or the promised rapid time span for change begins to slip. The political legitimacy of Scotland's institutions depends on it.
Scotland’s Yes voters, however, must not view the vote as a defeat. It is certainly no more disastrous for Scotland than the disasters being conjured up by the No campaign as the “inevitable” consequence of a Yes vote. Far from it. In truth Alex Salmond has leveraged out of the demand for independence a new political dispensation which will allow Scots substantially more power than ever before to shape their own fate and determine the nature of the politics that governs their country.
That radically enhanced devolution was not on offer from a complacent London at the beginning of the campaign. It was wrung from them by a brilliant campaign and its leader Salmond who deserves enormous credit. And he deserves enormous credit, though unlikely to get it, from the people of the rest of the UK whose own centralised political culture and institutions have at last been shaken from top to bottom by Scotland’s peaceful revolution.