There ain't gonna be a second question.

  Alex Salmond has been accused of jiggery pokery, collusion, manipulation and dishonesty over his offer to include a second “devo max” question in the independence referendum. The Scottish Affairs Select Committee in Westminster declared that Salmond only wants this as “an insurance policy against the verdict of the Scottish electorate.”   The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Willie Rennie, then accused Salmond of using the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations as a “front organisation”, after a leaked email suggested that the SNP leader's aides were trying to prompt the SCVO leader, Martin Sime, into coming up with the wording of a second question.        With support for independence falling, Salmond is, we are told, desperately looking for a way to snatch a kind of victory from the jaws of defeat by ensuring that he gets his “second best” option on the ballot paper.

Mind you, I'm not sure this is what the Yes campaign believe is happening. It may surprise you to learn that leading figures in the independence movement are privately expecting, indeed banking, on there being only one question. The trouble with the second question on devolution max is that a lot of Scottish nationalists think, and have always thought, that it is a very bad idea. This is because it will all but guarantee that independence loses, since the vast majority of Scottish voters favour a parliament with greater economic powers. So why hold a referendum that you can't win?

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.