Our country might be dissolved and most of you don’t seem to have noticed

I’m British.

Whenever I have to fill out a census form, or one of those annoying scroll-down boxes on a website that asks “what is your nationality?” I say British. I’m English too. But I’m also Northern and European. The country I’m from is Britain. So if I’m in Scotland, or Wales, I don’t feel any more alien than I do when I’m in Surrey. Actually. Scrap that. I feel far more alien when I’m in Surrey (sorry Surrey).

But despite being British, feeling British and having a British passport, in a couple of years I might not be British anymore – and I don’t get a say in it. If Scotland leaves the Union, the country I know as Britain won’t exist anymore. I’ll be a foreigner when I drive the short distance from the North East to visit my friend in Jedburgh at Christmas. To visit the country where so many of my ancestors lived and worked and died, I might need a passport. And I don’t get a say either way.

And quite right – it’s up to the Scottish people to self-determine whether or not they want to be part of the UK or not. But because those of us in London and Newcastle, Tunbridge Wells and Guilford aren’t getting a vote, and because the London based media aren’t covering the referendum nearly enough (I’ll hold my hands up and say that LabourList hasn’t either), and because – rightly or wrongly – many outside Scotland have assumed that the debate is over and that Scotland are staying in the union, most people in the rest of Britain barely seem to have noticed that the referendum campaign is happening at all.

There’s an existential threat to the future of the UK. Britain as we know it might be dissolved in just a matter of months. And yet much of the British people seem strangely unaware or indifferent to it all.

Until – perhaps – today, when the SNP published their “White Paper” for what a Scotland post-independence might look like. It’s largely a SNP manifesto designed to reel voters in with all sorts of retail offers and possible goodies to be redeemed upon independence. As Alistair Darling said earlier, it’s a “work of fiction” that ignores serious questions about currency, taxation and pensions. But it’s also the battleground on which the next 10 months of Scottish politics will be fought.

And that’s a battle those of us both inside and outside of Scotland should be invested in. So LabourList will be bringing you more coverage of this crucial vote over the next year, working harder to cover more of Scottish politics, and campaigning in Scotland over the next year for a No vote. Details on all of this to follow shortly.

Because soon our country might be dissolved and most of you don’t seem to have noticed – and that’s not good enough.