2014年经济学人 苏格兰公投的收官之战 消耗战（在线收听）

Scotland's referendum endgame

A war of attrition

The peculiar smallness of Scotland's independence debate

RESEMBLING nothing so much as a pair of irritable golfers yelling at each other in the clubhouse bar, on August 25th the leaders of Scotland's pro- and anti-independence camps collided in the second of two televised debates. If passions are high as the referendum campaign enters its final leg—with unionists ahead in polls but wary of a late nationalist surge—this reflects the stakes. A “yes” vote on September 18th would terminate Britain's 307-year-old political union.

Filter out the noisy interruptions, though, and both Alex Salmond, Scotland's nationalist premier, and Alistair Darling, the unionist former chancellor of the exchequer, make dry points. Neither lingered on the overall case for or against the union, though Mr Darling banged on about currency whenever he could. For much of the debate they tussled over domestic policy areas like health care and housing benefits. A contest between two starkly different futures for Britain came to resemble one over today's public services.

Another recent debate involving lesser figures in Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, suggests why the campaigns are so keen to occupy this ground. The church where it was held contained a cross-section of the electorate: from teenagers to pensioners, some in tracksuits, others in collar and tie. From the altar, an actuarial “no” campaigner brandished charts depicting the risks of independence. They clapped. Then his “yes” opponent lamented “Scotland's plundered oil”. They clapped again. Many cheerily applauded both sides.

The latest Scottish Social Attitudes survey suggests that about one-third of Scots are committed to independence and another third think devolution need go no farther than it has already. The referendum will be decided by the rest—pragmatists who would prefer greater autonomy without quitting the United Kingdom altogether. Wise to this, the two sides have tried to convey that this is more-or-less what voting for them would achieve in practice, while seeking to push the other lot off the “devo max” territory. Hence the debate's apparent smallness.

The three main unionist parties—Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives—have each published proposals for further devolution. The Tory report, published in June, was the most striking: a party that has long stood for political centralisation offered Edinburgh full control of income tax. And the nationalist government has alighted on similar ground from the opposite side. Last November it published a 670-page manifesto insisting that an independent Scotland could share the pound, stay in the EU and remain closely integrated with the rest of Britain. Over the next few weeks campaigners from both camps will assure voters that their particular brand of semi-detachedness holds the solution to their day-to-day gripes.

This is remarkable, and lamentable. A victory for the nationalists would send tremors far beyond Scotland. It would trigger calls for David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister, to resign. It would change the arithmetic, and quite possibly the outcome, of next year's general election. It would embolden separatists in Spain, Belgium and elsewhere. The difference between the campaigns' pitches to voters may be relatively modest, but that between a “yes” and a “no” is vast.