Come back Arch Duke Franz - all is forgiven

Wull ye no come back again, Arch Duke Franz of Bavaria? The Kirk dropped a constitutional bombshell into the referendum campaign last week by suggesting that Scottish monarchs should be crowned in Scotland after independence. The last king to have been so invested was Charles 11 in 1651, who was of course a Catholic.   Direct in line through the Jacobite succession today is one Franz of Bavaria, an amiable octogenarian who may not fully appreciate that he is King over the Water.

The Restoration didn't end too well for the Presbyterians back in the day. It led to the “Killing Time” of the 1680s - when thumbscrews and the gallows were the penalties Presbyterians suffered for holding their open-air 'conventicles'.     The Act of Settlement in 1701 prevented Catholics from becoming monarchs ever again, and we are still signed up to that – much to the frustration of Alex Salmond who has been trying to get the Act changed so that it no longer discriminates against Catholics.

Which might be why the Kirk also called last week for the Church of Scotland to be called the National Church of Scotland.  If the Jacobites got their hands back on the throne, Franz might be minded to bring back thumbscrews for Protestants. And then invade England.

What does all this mean? Well, almost nothing, since no one seriously takes issue with the Hanoverian succession these days, and few of us are members of any church. But it provided another perplexing constitutional issue for Scots to worry about as they await the referendum, or should that be referendoom,  in September 2014.    Like the threat that Scotland's bank notes may be taken away, as alleged by the UK Treasury's latest broadside against independence. Not content with oor Pandas, they will even take oor poonds.

Is the independence referendum already lost?

SCENES from the independence debate: I took my son, Jamie, to the very excellent Stand comedy club shortly after New Year.

It was a packed and raucous show, with a mostly young audience. The compere – a tubby guy from Edinburgh whose name escapes me – launched into an obscene rant about Alex Salmond and Scottish Nationalists who, apparently, are people of a sordid sexual disposition who need to be put down in various brutal ways. And anyway, he said, the Scots "could never govern themselves 'cos they are totally and completely f***ing useless". As a punchline, he bawled out: "Does anyone here support independence?" Not a soul spoke.

You can't judge the politics of a country by its comedy, but if this had been Barcelona, that comic would have been lucky to escape unharmed. Catalans, who are also having an independence referendum in 2014, are fiercely proud of their abilities, whether they support independence or not, and would have taken exception to this affront to their national dignity. Now, don't get me wrong: it's good that we laugh at ourselves (though if the compere had been funny it might have helped). I only offer this as a random insight into Scotland's frame of mind as we enter 2013: the insecurity and awkwardness many Scots feel about the whole idea of independence; the lack of confidence in their ability to govern themselves; uncertainty about whether they even want to bother with it. It's Yes Scotland's biggest nightmare: the credibility gap.

Opinion polls confirm that Scots still just don't get independence. At least, not yet. The most striking thing about the referendum debate thus far is how little change there has been in Scottish attitudes to independence since the SNP's landslide victory in 2011. Scots still oppose independence by around two to one – a ratio that has remained constant for the last 20 years, give or take the occasional poll giving independence a marginal and transitory lead. It's hard to look at the evidence and not conclude that the Yes campaign has lost even before the campaign has started. Labour and the Better Together campaign are already awarding themselves battle honours and talking of getting three million No votes.

The Yes campaign team insists it is relaxed about the polls and points out that the SNP's landslide victory in the Scottish elections in 2011 was incubated largely during the campaign itself. In the year running up to the Holyrood elections, Labour had a comfortable lead in the polls and it was only after the campaign started that Scottish voters decided that Iain Gray was toast.

Better Together or living apart together. The NO campaign begins.

It's the campaign that just can't say no. “Better Together”, the unionist campaign for the independence referendum, finally gets underway tomorrow trying to avoid the word “no”, because of its negative connotations. This may cause some voter confusion because if you google “Better Together”, you discover that it is the NHS patient experience campaign. We knew that Scotland wasn't in the best of health, but we didn't realise she was actually in intensive care.

Better Together brings to an end a curious phase in Scottish politics where unionism has been almost completely out of the picture. Labour has been so anxious not to be allied a “Tory union” led by David Cameron, that it has allowed the case for sticking with Britain to go by default.. Until now - as the former Chancellor, Alastair Darling, unveils the campaign at Edinburgh's Napier University. This was the venue used by Alex Salmond to launch the National Conversation five years ago and it's taken that long to reply.