Chris

Salmond is a gradualist. He has always hoped that the case for separation could be grown slowly, from the ground up, to the point where the case for a referendum was so compelling, one or more of the main parties at Holyrood would break ranks and support a referendum bill, or at least abstain. The last thing he wanted was an outright majority at Holyrood. It has left him with no reason not to hold a referendum right now. All he has been able to do is to take a wild shot at holding it when Scottish nationalist feeling is likely to be at its highest. The Commonwealth Games are in Glasgow next year and it is also the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, which to all intents and purposes is Scotland's Hastings (except Scotland won).

When you look at what the SNP is saying about how an independent Scotland will look, it is not actually that different to what "Devo Max" might look like, except with separate Scottish representation at various international bodies like the UN and EU. The strategy seems to be to try to win round the undecideds and some of the nos by convincing them they might as well agree to something that will hardly be different at all, except for the removal of "London" from the equation (which is as close as SNP ministers ever get to discussing their deep-seated hatred of the involvement of England in Scotland's affairs).

Of course, once Scotland became an independent country, any or all of the remaining ties to the Union could be ditched as a matter of party policy, without any further referendum.

Salmond's right-hand woman, Nicola Sturgeon, has been on the TV this week insisting, against the evidence of every single poll taken since the referendum was announced, and against the evidence of almost every poll ever conducted before that, that there is a "natural majority" in favour of separation. The SNP's line seems to be that we want independence, we just don't know it yet. Which is a bit odd, because we didn't want independence when all we had was the SNP telling us how great it would be, and now we have a well-organised campaign, for the first time ever, rebuffing SNP assertions about independence and challenging their ludicrous claims.

In the meantime, yes, the SNP gets elected as it is the only mainstream alternative to Labour in Holyrood. The Scottish electorate is every bit as sophisticated as that elsewhere in the UK and gives the SNP more votes for Holyrood than it does for Westminster. I haven't looked at the figures but I suspect the "natural" level of support for independence in Scotland lies with those who voted SNP in 2010 for Westminster, and will do so in 2015. That number is quite a lot lower than those who voted for the SNP for Holyrood in 2011.