Whatever the result, whoever wants to win the election next May is going to have to appease the Scots, soothe the English & battle against a surge in support for UKIP.

well not exactly, if the vote goes to the Yes party today then there's a good chance that there won't be a UK general election next year and even if there is then the soon-to-be English parliament isn't going to need to appease the Scots over anything.

We have a fixed term Parliament. That cannot be changed. The Scots will have to be appeased. A yes vote will mean negotiations to make it as clean a settlement as possible. In the event of a No, enough further devolution to shoot the independence fox.

There won't be an English Parliament. If the Scots do vote Yes, there is still a UK left. If they do vote Yes, the 59 Scottish constituencies represented in Westminster should be erased from the UK's political map prior to the 2015 General Election.

If they vote No & more powers are devolved to Holyrood, the vested interests of the Westminster elite, particularly those parties who will lose most seats, will deflect the West Lothian question through devolving some powers to the regions.

40 less Labour MP's last time would have meant a Conservative government. Going forward, this is a huge problem for the Labour party, which is why, apart from his recent visit, Cameron has been happy for them to do all the work for the Better Together campaign.

Yes it can

In the same way it was changed to fixed term parliaments after the last election you mean?

It rarely has been in the past. I think it is only one, possibly two past Labour victories have relied on the Scottish MP's.

It has also worked the other way. Scotland returned 22 Tory MP's in 1979 and in Major v Kinnock election it returned 11 when Major won with a majority of 21. Had Scotland been as solid Labour as you imply Major would have lost that election. Scotland until recently has never been a shoe in for Labour.

The difference in this referendum is that each vote counts equally.

May 2010 general election in Scotland

Conservatives - 412,855 votes = 1 seat
Lib Dems - 465,471 votes = 11 seats
SNP - 491,386 votes = 6 seats
Labour -1,035,528 votes = 41 seats

Hardly fair but there you go. So Salmond's SNP only represents about half of those that voted for the present government yet he continues to go on about independence guaranteeing a change in direction.

If this referendum had only included the above voters then the NOs would have won hands down. However this time there are another 1.9 million who have registered to vote including many school kids aged 16 and over and many adults who are not political and could be voting just emotionally with the heart not the head which is why this could be on a knife edge. Because the pollsters have no similar history to compare they are as much in the dark about the result as the rest of us.

Isn't it fairly simple in the case of a Yes vote? There's a 2015 UK General Election as normal. Then whenever Scotland actually becomes independent the Scottish MP's no longer are MP's as they have no constituency. So they are removed from a Parliament and you're left with what remains.

Might be tricky if it's a Labour government elected in 2015 who's majority is reliant on Scottish MP's but the parliament can still be dissolved and another election called if necessary.

rlThere is a very good article hererl that offers an opinion on what will happen in Scotland if there is a yes vote.

Most people voting Yes have no idea what it will bring them because the Yes campaign have kept it so vague. It is basically a "jam tomorrow" message.

The alliance of disparate groups for Yes often put forward as a positive thing by the Yes side tells you there are going to be some VERY disillusioned Yes voters very quickly. As the article I linked to points out you have the Socialist Workers Party (who want a socialist utopia) in bed with Business for Scotland (who will want everything the Tories in the UK want) and the Greens (anti-fossil fuel) alongside the SNP (who want to extract as much oil as possible).

Yet the message has been, vote Yes, ditch the Tories and voila a new socially responsible Scottish state will emerge.

This is just not going to happen. There is going to be same political fighting in Scotland as there is in every other western country.

Some nationalists will argue that is fine because whatever the outcome it will have been Scotland not Westminster that decided it but that is not what has been promised.

Three actually 1964, 1974 & 2010

I would have thought so. In any case I think the timetable for independence occurring is ludicrously optimistic in my opinion at around 18 months so it would be quite feasible for that to go out to four or five years. So a UK election could be called to coincide with the break up of the UK.

It would also be interesting to see what happens with constituencies in England, Wales and NI. The Tories had this bonkers idea to make them 100K voters in size based on who was [iregistered to vote[/i, not the population which would have meant some geographically huge constituencies. I think there will be calls for a redrawing of boundaries rather than just the rest of the UK going with the simple idea of just ditching the Scottish MP's.

2010? Labour didn't win in 2010!

True of course but in 2010 Cameron's Tories would have had an overall majority so the election results would have been different without Scottish seats which shows the importance if Labour were to lose these.

Even with a win for the Union it is most likely that the give aways promised in the DevoMax2 will bring an unstoppable demand for change in the rest of the UK with an increasing possibility of an English Parliament with the West Lothian question finally being resolved.

What is perfectly clear now about the whole Scottish devolution vote is that none of the political party's seem to have considered what may happen if the Scots vote Yes, hence the panic emanating from Westminster last week with not so carefully leaked reports that "senior" MPs were "investigating" how the 2015 general election could be postponed until Scotland is totally devolved - they were still working on Salmonds target of 2016 - this is but one of many press reports from last week that you may have missed rlhttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/03/calls-to-postpone-uk-general-election-scots-independencerl

However, as with all things in this poll, nothing is planned, nothing is formalised, nothing has been considered, it looks like it could be the biggest cock-up in civil service history if they vote Yes.