Mary Dejevsky: Scottish independence: the dream that just melted away

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister and head of the Scottish National Party, is an adroit operator, and one whose future looked a better bet, in political stock market terms, than that of any party leader in the UK. Until the last couple of weeks, that is, when the comfortably round Mr Salmond has looked as though the stuffing has been knocked out of him. With the takeover and part-nationalisation respectively of HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the odds on Mr Salmond's realising his life's project – Scottish independence – have lengthened almost to infinity.

At the base level, Scotland lost control of two of its proudest institutions and had to look, again, to Westminster. And with those august banks went much of Scotland's reputation for thrift and sound management. The vulnerability of a few weeks undermined solidity built up over centuries. That might be unjust, but it is so.

At a higher level, the notion that Scotland could be viable as an independent country, in large part thanks to a strong financial services, has been discredited. Iceland, cited as a promising model for Scotland's future, proved the point with its precipitate descent into near-bankruptcy. Mr Salmond's reverie of a Nordic "arc of prosperity" was ridiculed south of the border as an "arc of insolvency".

And at the highest, least tangible level, there is psychology. How much belief will Scots retain in their country's ability to go it alone in the great global world? However angry they might feel about the Westminster rescue and what gave rise to it, will they not now see independence as too risky – a luxury no longer to be afforded?

Mr Salmond, of course, was always going to find it hard to convince a sufficient number of Scots to vote "yes" in a referendum. Polls rarely showed a majority in favour of leaving the Union. The English have been rather keener on an independent Scotland, one obvious reason being financial – the subsidies that help Scots enjoy free prescriptions, free care for the elderly and free higher education.

The most compelling political reason – resentment that Scottish MPs can vote in the UK Parliament for unpopular health and education measures that apply only in England – has tended to be one for the cognoscenti, though its following has been increasing.

As an English voter, I supported Scottish independence for both these reasons. But it also seemed to be the logical consequence of an awkwardly partial devolution – a process that Westminster, having set it in train, had no right to stop halfway. I had another perspective, too. Having reported on the (largely peaceful) disintegration of the Soviet empire through the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had no principled objection to the changing of borders. There were, it seemed to me, times when redrawing a national frontier or permitting the creation of a new state made sense.

The Baltic States and the former constituent republics of Yugoslavia – to take but two examples – are, by and large, far more content and better governed than they were when they were formally part of somewhere else. Even if rule from Westminster is more benevolent than rule from Moscow or Belgrade, there was no good reason why what worked for these newly formed, or re-formed, states should not work for Scotland, too.

Yet now I seriously doubt that Scotland will ever be independent. And I rather suspect, from his body language, if not from his defiant words to the SNP's conference on Sunday, that deep down Mr Salmond agrees. At a time of such uncertainty sweeping in from outside, who would generate more of their own? Simply, the stars that came together to favour independence have moved out of alignment again.

Yet the fundamentals of the argument for independence remain. Scots have a well-defined and – to judge by polls and my own observation – a growing sense of nationhood. Their systems of justice and government, along with their social priorities, are growing away from those elsewhere in the UK. Where once Scots denounced Westminster for experimenting with Scotland, they are now, in some respects, a willing test-bed for England.

Size is no bar to statehood; there are many smaller EU members than Scotland. And Scots could, as the SNP has begun to do, reasonably blame today's banking difficulties on the excesses of the City of London. If only Mr Salmond had not made that diabolical comparison with Iceland. A more apposite parallel might have been with the Irish or the Danes, for whom the EU has been a protector in the storm. I just hope that if the Scots really want independence, they will persist. They should call back to service their doughty national hero, and try – and try – again.

m.dejevsky@independent.co.uk

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