Hope will trump Fear - the case for YES

The case for independence is very simple. We are in an unequal union with a country ten times our size who has very little in common with us politically. What we need is equality in world affairs ie a seat in the UN and full control over all domestic and foreign policy. That is likely to be from within the EU but if the unlikely prospect of being forced to leave the EU actually happened (in which case England would be in the same boat) then EFTA is actually a reasonable and probably popular alternative.

Of course what the UK is now saying is that England and its dominions (as they see it though I am sure Wales won't accept such a status for long post Scots independence though NI probably will) would be treated entirely differently from Scotland because the rest of the UK (rUK) would be treated as the successor state.

Westminster is so desperate for a legal opinion that rUK/England will be the only successor state that they now are saying that Scotland was politically extinguished by the union, that Scotland leaving the UK would have no effect on its status whatsoever and that every treaty signed by Britain had no connection with one of the main countries that was a part of it!

Logically this means that Scotland has got nothing from being in the union apart from a tenth share in Britain's enormous national debt and if we had zero status within the union there is no reason why we should accept that either!

This doesn't strike me as a positive case for the union and directly contradicts their traditional narrative that we have all being doing great things together for the last 300 years and we just can't afford to break our beautiful friendship. No doubt this will be deployed as well in time but it rather undermines that case when you admit that what was supposed to be an equal British union was actually just a device to expand English power abroad. (That's the raw truth but Westminster must be in dire straits to be actually admitting it).

The Tory Government and their friends in the press seem to think that its OK to stigmatise the unemployed as lazy wasters and chancers and that workers should be encouraged to sell out all their working rights to their employer at the beginning of their working life This type of political attitude is alien to the Scots psyche and the obvious choice is to remain with Conservative rule (or their Labour imitators) or take a chance on trusting ourselves.

Eventually hope always trumps fear so I suggest the YES campaign has an excellent chance of victory.