In Scotland’s romcom, who wants to wake up with David Cameron on Friday?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/17/scotland-romcom-david-cameron-westminster-trust

Version 0 of 1.

Floppy-haired posho David Cameron sprinting across an airport terminal at the 11th hour, wilted roses in hand, hoping to save a doomed relationship before his true love, Scotland, takes off and leaves him for ever. It’s a script that could have been written by Richard Curtis. And if it was a romcom it would be titled The Love Bomb.

It could very well be that the no vote prevails tomorrow in the independence referendum. Millions of disappointed yes voters will be left to contemplate those wilted roses, the further devolution deal being offered instead. Will they go for it? Would yes voters like me be willing to settle for devo max?

If this option had been on the ballot, some pollsters reckon it could have attracted more votes than a yes or no would have done. A number of Scottish Labour politicians, most of whom have since stuck to the no script, indicated they would have supported devo max back before the referendum question was settled. But the vow signed by Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband is not true devo max.

Commitment to maintaining the Barnett formula, which determines how much public expenditure Scotland gets, is not full fiscal autonomy. It’s also not an offer of a federal UK, with a representative house for England and an elected upper house for the whole country – which many on both sides of the referendum issue believe Britain deserves. It’s not voted for directly by the people.

In other words, it’s a lot of bended knee wheedling and promises. It’s the policy equivalent of John Cusack standing outside Scotland’s window with a boom box held aloft until they soften and give him another chance.

For me the decision is simple. If this were a film, I would be the jaded mate of the heroine, slugging chardonnay and urging Scotland to ditch that jerk. The yes campaign has offered a fairer shake to migrants than the UK has. As a migrant, I’m too recently out of a bad 15-year relationship with the UK Border Agency system not to instinctively shudder at anti-immigration policies being embraced by all major parties. The offer on the table doesn’t include control over regional migration, so I for one am not impressed.

In true romcom style my issues are not the same as the heroine’s. For other yes voters it comes down to trust. Many in Scotland who have been watching Westminster’s belated and mishandled entrance into the debate feel that Cameron, Clegg and Miliband’s vow is not worth the paper it’s written on. Clegg in particular has form on signing guarantees that never come to pass, like his campaign pledge to eliminate tuition fees.

Not that the Conservatives have anything to crow about in the consistency stakes either: “No vote will not kill devolution, pledges Thatcher” was a headline from the run-up to the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum that, needless to say, was hot air. It would be another 20 years before a devolved Scottish parliament held session.

Gordon Brown seems to have forgotten his 1979 statement about “last-minute and half-baked proposals” offered by the government. Miliband meanwhile showed himself so out of touch with Scotland and its issues that he tweeted about canvassing voters in the Kingswood area of Glasgow, only to be told by half the internet that it’s Knightswood. Actually.

A timetable for a discussion of the possibility of more devolved powers, decided by the House of Commons and not by the people of Scotland, would be a climbdown from a direct referendum. Cameron does not appear to have control of the messages coming from his own side, with Nadine Dorries bemoaning having to “subsidise” deep fried Mars bars and Boris Johnson vowing to oppose Scottish tax devolution.

Better Together tried to shift away from Bullingdon old boys and tap a little Cool Britannia spirit by drafting David Beckham. But can the heart-throb of a generation ago sway an electorate that includes people who weren’t even born the first time Beckham was capped for England, a team they never supported?

Would you trust someone offering last-minute vows they probably can’t keep? Like any relationship, there’s a part of you that would like to believe it could still work out. Unlike me, most voters in the referendum were born in Scotland; shared history has a strong pull. It might work, though not without a lot of public engagement and reassurance. If the level of interest that has characterised the referendum debate stays there will be many people with a personal stake in keeping Westminster to its promises. The power of social media networks to subvert traditional media in this debate will not disappear after 18 September.

In the end, Cameron is just a boy standing in front of 5 million people, asking them to love him. But remember that romcoms never show us the morning after. On Friday morning we’ll all be the same people we were the night before. Does Scotland want to wake up in bed with those guys?