Ayes to the left

IT IS not yet midday, and the Tolbooth pub has filled with the boisterous green-and-white-clad supporters of Celtic, the football team of Glasgow’s working-class Catholics. But an argument opposite the bar concerns the constitution, not the match. Cathy declares that if Scotland left the United Kingdom it would remain in the EU. Thomas, sipping a neon-orange concoction of Irn Bru and vodka, shakes his head forcefully: “No, we’d have to reapply.” They have one important thing in common, though. Neither has yet decided whether to vote for or against Scottish independence.

On September 18th all Scots over the age of 15 will be offered that choice in a referendum. The pro-union Better Together campaign is reliably ahead in the opinion polls. With a strong hand in any secession negotiations, the unionists have foxed the pro-independence Yes Scotland camp with erudite questions about tricky details. The latest came in a speech by Mark Carney in Edinburgh on January 29th. Though he stressed his non-partisan, “technocratic” role, the governor of the Bank of England warned that for Scotland to share the pound it would need to accept “some ceding of national sovereignty”. On such high-level fronts, the unionists are winning the war.