There is — if the abject Unionist parties do not make their usual mistake of misjudging Salmond — a chance in all of this to reframe the discussion. Scots may be persuaded that the relative security of the UK as it stands, for all its difficulties, is a far better bet than a gamble on the uncertainty of an EU-orientated future. Running against this is the idea that the Scots are intrinsically more pro-European than their supposedly inward-looking southern cousins. This is nonsense but has long been one of the principal conceits of Scottish nationalists and home-rulers. In the self-regarding world of devolved Edinburgh politics, with its smug presumptions of moral superiority over the English, this is regarded as a given.

There is actually little evidence to suggest Scots are more pro-European than the English, or are "better Europeans" to use a loaded phrase. As Professor James Mitchell, the doyen of political scientists in Scotland has noted, there was a period towards the end of the 1980s when Scots were marginally more in favour of European integration. But that was largely because Margaret Thatcher was opposed to it and on that basis some Scots took the view that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". It didn't go much deeper than that.

Of course, many Scots (to my horror, as a British Scot) now delight in supporting Germany or any other European nation playing against England in sporting contests. It may be an important indicator of national feeling and an expression of petty resentments, but it is certainly not evidence of good Europeanism. Such petty anti-Englishness is merely proof that the rise of narrow nationalism has coarsened manners and damaged neighbourly relations. 

A dedicated nationalist, donning tartan-tinted specs, might point to the colourful historical relationship between Scotland and France, the Auld Alliance (more celebrated in Edinburgh than in Paris, in my experience), as evidence that pre-Union Scotland was more continental in its outlook. Now a nation "liberated" from English control is in the process of rediscovering strong direct ties with other countries in some vague way via Brussels. Do the French or others see it that way? Er... non.