MY close friend, Alistair Darling, leader of the “Better Together” campaign, has been telling anyone who would listen for the past three years that opinion polls on Scottish separation from the UK would always tighten as polling day approached, just as they did when Quebec had a separation referendum in 1995.

Last weekend’s opinion polls have certainly concentrated the minds of the “No” campaign.

Let us hope that it’s fired-up supporters in sufficient numbers to ensure that a week today Scots look over the abyss which is so-called “independence” and pull back.

I say “so-called” because for all the nonsense that the Scottish Nationalist leader Alex Salmond talks about how Scotland is put upon by the “Westminster elite” – and the crude anti-English “dog whistles” of some of his supporters – the truth is that in the UK the Scots have always enjoyed both power and influence completely disproportionate to the fact that they represent only one in 11 of the UK population – and I celebrate this.

The first irony is that if the Scots do separate from the rest of the UK they will end up with less control, not more, over the things that really matter. Take the currency.

Mr Salmond may dismiss this issue now but it will hit him in the face if he does win. There cannot be a currency union. So the Scots will be left either using our pound but having absolutely no influence or control over interest rates and credit, or establishing a separate currency, with the huge risks which that entails.

The second irony is that deep-down Mr Salmond never wanted this referendum, still less to win separation. Oh, there’ll be dancing in the streets by “Yes” supporters for a while, but once that party is over Mr Salmond will have the mother and father of headaches. His alibi of blaming the English will be gone.

I will be profoundly sad if Scotland does separate. The UK will face lots of difficulties we could do without. But we’ll still have 91 per cent of the previous population, and economy.

For Scotland, on the other hand, separation will be a catastrophe.