One month until the referendum – then we can begin the task of bringing our nation back together

For these past three years, the referendum has put everything but the constitution on hold in Scotland politics.

But one month from today we will go to the polls. Postal votes go out in less than two weeks.

The so-called game-changers for the Yes campaign: the White Paper; the European elections; the Bannockburn anniversary; the Commonwealth Games; have come and gone, and yet the game remains largely unchanged.

The Scottish Social Attitudes survey released last week – the gold standard of opinion polling – shows that independence remains just as much a minority interest as it has done for the last fifteen years. After more than seven years of SNP government and two years of campaigning, the Nationalists haven’t really moved support for separation at all. The balance of Scottish opinion remains as it always has, in favour of a powerful Scottish Parliament, but of remaining in the UK too.

And all the time the clock ticks down on a nationalist campaign which can’t be a happy place.

For me the Yes campaign message has so far been a curious mixture of insecurity and assertiveness. Despite their White Paper, voters have had few convincing answers from the SNP on issues as basic as the pound or our pensions. Little suggests they have any intention of – or indeed space to – change their stance now.

The Nationalists claimed the UK was holding Scotland’s economy back: but the Scottish Social Attitudes shows that most Scots – and increasing proportion of us compared with last year – believe that the economy would suffer under independence. They claimed that independence was needed to reduce inequality, but the survey showed about twice as many people think inequality would be worse under independence than better – and that number has risen since last year too.

Time and again Scots have shown they won’t have the wool pulled over their eyes. It will take more than blind assertion in the face of hard facts to win us around.

While the Nationalist campaign is increasingly talking to itself, they should not be underestimated. This campaign is for them what politics is about. In the remaining weeks ahead I predict they will judge that their only option is attack rather than defence; to give up on the evidence entirely and simply go for it on emotion. They know full well that Ukip’s success, and the rise of other nationalist parties around Europe, owes more to emotion than economics. With families still grappling with the traumas of a post-crash economy, there will be a none-too-subtle appeal to suggest proximity is identity, and that people furth of Scotland do not and cannot share our values.

Secondly, they’ll try to claim that somehow a Yes vote will bring more powers to Scotland but not break up the UK. We’ve already had the tactical adoption of the monarchy, and the threadbare assertion we’ll keep the British pound. The SNP is a party whose goal and raison d’être was separation. But, in the face of the granite like resistance of the polls the party has got frightened and got cynical. Its leadership now claim that they feel British too.

Let no-one be fooled – this isn’t a positive vision. This is simply tactics from a party portraying its plans as “independence lite”, in the full knowledge that a Yes result delivers an irrevocable mandate for irreversible separation. It is weakness, not strength, that leads to such a politics of stealth.

Thirdly, they’ll claim a No vote means no change. They’ll talk a lot about Alec Douglas-Home. And they’ll talk very little about the powers they have but don’t use, the powers coming with the Scotland Act 2012, or the commitments by all three main UK parties to deliver further powers, whoever wins the general election.

In these final few weeks, the millions of us Scots who believe Scotland can be a better nation without becoming a separate nation need to keep questioning the Nationalists’ assertions.

It is our patriotic duty to understand the implications of the choice and examine the consequences for all of Scotland’s people. The loss of the pound. The risks to pensions. The sheer folly of turning our nearest neighbours into our closest competitors.

And, just as we have mastered our opponents on the evidence, we must match them on emotion.

No side in this debate has a monopoly on Scottish patriotism.

We are deeply invested emotionally in the endurance of our historic nation within a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-national state on these small islands of ours. As ancient hatreds rise once again in so many parts of the world, across this small island we have much to be proud of in showing how solidarity need not compromise identity.

Interestingly, the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey showed that an unexpected outcome of the referendum campaign is that is has made Scots feel a bit more British. Less than a quarter of the Scottish population now see themselves Scottish but not British, and the proportion who are more Scottish than British has been declining since 2011.

All of us know the referendum has both energised and further divided politics in Scotland. However, it has also caused divisions within families, between neighbours and supporters of different sides of the argument. Secession has too often stifled broader debate – we need to start talking together afresh.

When the campaigning is over, we, on the side of the Scotland staying within the UK, have always said we will accept any result. Optimistically the nationalists will, on 19 September, finally make a similar concession. Then we can, I hope jointly, begin the task of bringing our nation back together.

But first as Scots we need to bring home the vote.​