Ultimately, the question may be determined in England rather than in Scotland. As Prime Minister, John Major warned against the rise of English nationalism. This may however be less of a danger than the continuation of the common English assumption that the UK is only a Greater England. Of course England is, for obvious reasons, the dominant partner, but it is still a partner, not an overlord. If English politicians — and Tory ones especially — accept that the Union has taken a new looser form and resolve to make this work to the benefit of all the peoples of these islands (for much that has been said of the Scots is true of the Welsh and Northern Irish, too) then Donald Dewar's hope that devolution would make for "the better governance of Scotland and the United Kingdom" may be fulfilled, and "banal unionism" will enjoy a new lease of life. If, on the other hand, they display the insensitivity to national feeling that was thought to characterise the Thatcher governments, then national-unionist feeling in Scotland will turn nationalist and we might indeed be careering down the motorway to independence and the end of Union.

Even on the most optimistic of the party's projections, nobody expects that there will be more than three or four Tory MPs from Scotland in the next parliament. How Cameron responds to the difficulties occasioned by his party's meagre representation in Scotland and by the presence of a nationalist administration in Edinburgh will be a test of his good sense, generosity of spirit and statesmanship. It will also determine whether the 300-year-old Union survives.