"Forget about the constitutional and legal arguments. Just face facts. Given the geographical position of the North Sea oil fields, does anyone think, for one moment, that the Westminster is going to let Scotland go solo in the forseeable future?"

They would certainly try and win the propaganda argument within Scotland and the usual scare stories have already started in the run up to the election but again as stated before the majority of Scots at the moment still favour the union anyway. Do I think that Westminster would try and hold on to Scotland by actual force? No I don't think so though there would be some serious negotiating going on over both natural resources and issues like the submarine bases etc. An SNP government in Scotland would want to work with whatever the remaining UK was called but one of its main planks is a nuclear free Scotland so that would be a sticky issue.