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A two-year campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Scottish people before they vote on whether to leave the United Kingdom began yesterday as the Scottish and UK Governments signed an historic agreement on an independence referendum.

Referendums hover over British politics like a thunderous sky, shaping and reshaping debates, dividing parties and then artificially unifying them, changing history and yet never quite doing so. Referendums are a device that leaders cling to for comfort before they threaten to destroy them. Considering there have only ever been two UK referendums, the plebiscite feels like a strangely ubiquitous device, the mere prospect of one causing as much excitement as fear.

A two-year campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Scottish people before they vote on whether to leave the United Kingdom began yesterday as the Scottish and UK Governments signed an historic agreement on an independence referendum.

It is, as the Prime Minister noted yesterday, an agreement which paves the way for the "biggest question of all". After years of nationalist agitation, and months of political hardball over the mechanics of a ballot, a referendum on Scottish independence will now be held in the autumn of 2014. Given the public appetite for a vote, it can only be welcome that the formal process has finally begun. But to support the right to choose is not necessarily to support all choices, and it is this newspaper's view that Scotland's interests remain firmly with the Union.

Viewers in Scotland could be forced to pay on top of their licence fee to watch popular BBC programmes such as Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing, under plans for a new, post-independence Scottish public service broadcaster, Labour will warn this week.

Personally, I enjoy nothing more than kicking back on Thursday lunchtimes to catch First Minister's Questions from Holyrood. Although I haven't yet had the chance to vote, having only recently turned 18, there is little on this planet more stimulating for me than watching Alex Salmond bicker with MSPs over education, healthcare and the economy. However, for some peculiar reason, political interest among my teenage peers, indeed among the rest of the population, is not high.

MPs should be given an early chance to debate cutting the voting age to 16 across the UK following the decision to allow younger teenagers to participate in the Scottish independence referendum, electoral reformers said last night.

Electoral reformers press for MPs to debate issue after Prime Minister agrees lower limit for Scottish referendum

I will never say my beloved country can't go it alone. But the SNP's leader has made a bunch of ridiculous claims about the prospects for an independent Scotland

Westminster agrees to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in referendum on independence