YOU may be suffering Scotland fatigue by the time of reading, but what else is there to write a column about this week? I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with us for another few hundred words.

By now you should know whether we remain one big happy(ish) union or whether we have a breakaway nation just a few hundred miles north and will have to try not to lose our passports on top of everything else the next time we head up for Hogmanay drinks.

The last few weeks have been interesting, to say the least, with passions blazing white hot on both sides. The scenes have varied from the inspiring, the bewildering and the downright laughable. At times it has been like watching two grown men (largely Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond) smacking each other about the heads with oversized kippers as they ceaselessly accuse each other of lying, counter-lying, misrepresentation and disingenuousness (there has been lots of disingenuousness, apparently. Loads of it in fact.), while making thinly veiled economic threats. Straight talking has not always been the order of the day, when sidestepping questions and none-too-subtle subject changes have done the job instead.

It has prompted the sort of desperation that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of 24, the clock beep-beeping down as beads of sweat drip from the brows of our beleaguered politicians while they make their last, desperate bids, pleas and promises to win hearts and minds. They don’t have this sort of fire in their bellies (and screaming panic in their eyes) for the average general election.

Say what you want about David Cameron’s emotive speeches, there can’t be much doubt as to his sincerity – not a thing you can always say about our political leaders.

You might well think that if the Yes campaign prevails, he will be falling on his own sword in the not too distant future. Not a great legacy, I suppose, to be the PM who presided over the fracture of the union. Not that Labour and the Lib Dems will be unscathed when they lose a massive chunk of their north of the border support.

And Alex Salmond? Well, he does have the air of a man riding the crest of a wave that he’s pretending is never going to come crashing down. Not that he’s been disingenuous or anything.

The arguments for and against have veered from the obvious (currency and oil) to the unexpected but -makes-sense-when-you-think-about-it (John Lewis’ price rise warning, for instance).

Like most in England, I suspect, I hope the no vote has prevailed (as negative as that sounds – surely the ‘yes’ vote has the advantage just by being, you know, a bit more upbeat). I can’t see much sense, beyond a celebration of national pride for the Scottish, in such a division when we are still treading a precarious path out of economic gloom.

There are enough independent experts with no vested interest raising the alarm to make the ‘no’ case effortlessly more convincing.

The most striking thing about all this has been the incredible level of engagement. A staggering 97 per cent of the electorate was expected to make its voice heard. Of course, the stakes here are a lot higher than the average general election, but even so, I didn’t think there was more than 30-odd per cent of the electorate anywhere anymore.

So whichever way this thing goes, I hope some of this fervour rubs off on next year’s general election and beyond. If so, it will probably bring a bit of disingenuousness with it, though.