David Cameron has been accused of misreading the mood of the Scots; but is he also guilty of misreading the mood of his own voters in England? YouGov has conducted polls for Prospect both north and south of the border, and it finds not just that the English are less keen than the Scots to keep the United Kingdom intact, but that Conservative voters see particular benefits in Scotland going its own way.

We offered respondents four options: scrapping devolution, the status quo, “devo-max” and full Scottish independence. If we combine the first two as “unionist” options and the second two as “tartan” options (tartan, on the basis that “devo-max” will end up as a stepping stone to later independence), we find that the Scots divide 51-40 per cent for an inevitably tartan rather than Unionist future—while English voters divide even more clearly, 52-32 per cent in the same direction.