Professor Charles Pattie writes widely on electoral issues, and is an author of two books on recent Scottish politics, including a study of the 1997 devolution referendum. He is also a Scot…..

Scotland’s independence referendum on 18 September 2014 is a very strong contender for the most momentous vote in modern British political history. Heretical though it might be to say so, most general election results are relatively limited in their consequences: such is the degree of policy continuity from one government to another that even a change of government has relatively little effect. If you doubt this, think of those two exemplars of 20^th century radical, reforming government: Clement Atlee’s 1945-1951 Labour government, and Margaret Thatcher’s 1979-1990 Conservative government (the Major years till 1997 were a much less radical coda to what went before). They did more than most governments to change the political tide. Yet the basic…