Please don’t break up my country

No amount of eulogising about, for example, our live mortgage market debate yesterday - which is well worth re-living if you missed it - will change the fact that ahead of the fateful plebiscite which looms large in six days, my thoughts are inexorably on which option our countrymen (at least for now) north of the border will choose.

I could offer the usual hard-headed financial analysis for maintaining the principle of the status quo, so favoured by my fellow financial hacks and, not least, the bigwigs of the pro-union camp.

But don’t worry, I won’t. In any case this was far more eloquently expressed in a series of excellent editorials and in particular a passionate leader from our parent paper only yesterday.

In part I feel I would be preaching to the converted: according to a poll taken at a PFS event in Perth this month, eight in 10 Scottish financial advisers will vote no next Thursday. Elsewhere, financial services powerhouses are promising an exodus of biblical proportions if cessation carries the day.

It’s also because I’m not sure how much I really buy the argument.

I fervently believe that in a world both increasingly globally connected and, paradoxically, fragmented, we are all better off remaining in our symbiotic - and thanks to progressive devolution, largely symbolic - union.

But I also acknowledge that Scotland, and the ‘rump’ UK for as long as it remained such, would probably bumble along well enough in the long run, going their separate ways.

No, I want to make the argument that will resonate, I’m sure, with those of you with cross-border relationships both personal and private; in favour of maintaining this marvellous, bonkers, heterogenous sprawl of a country, bound by cultures, traditions and coexistence on this shared island fortress.

In truth, I actually feel a little bit put out by the referendum niceties necessitated by the fact I had the temerity to be born in a different part of this United Kingdom.

This country, in all of its chaotic and contrasting glory, is mine too. I don’t even get a say in its future

I must always state publicly that this choice is for Scotland and the Scottish people only, but I’m not sure I really believe that. This country, in all of its chaotic and contrasting glory, is mine too. If I don’t even get a say in its future, the least I should be allowed is to have an opinion.

My sister married a Scot and now lives, with my two beautiful nephews and niece, north of the border near Glasgow. My parents followed and live in a cosy village nearby. (If you’re interested - and I’m not sure why you would be - it is the place where all competition curling stones used across the world are produced, and where Rabbie Burns lived for nine years before he published anything of note).

This has given me ample excuse to visit Scotland regularly in recent years, including for many raucous two-day hootenannies to mark the Hogmanay festival at the turn of the year. I love it more each time.

(Incidentally, if Scotland goes independent, would the BBC continue to broadcast Jools Hollands’ Hogmanay bash of the same name across the UK on New Year’s Eve? That’d be a sad loss indeed if not. Anyway I digress; back to my paean to Scotland.)

When I got married two years ago, I spent a pre-stag weekend camping wild in the Highlands. My two best men and I slept variously in woods opposite Ben Nevis, on a hill overlooking Loch Ness, and on a grass verge next to a boat-cum-pub on the Caledonian canal near Fort William, in which we’d sing the night away with the locals, consuming too many pints of a feisty local ale.

The landscape was breathtakingly barren and utterly spectacular, unlike anything I’ve seen before or since. By turns wet, imposing, hostile, warm - and always a beguiling array of variegated greens. The people were the warmest and most welcoming you could hope to meet.

I can travel to this marvellous place, which is so different to where I live in London, and be truly a world away, while remaining thoroughly somewhere I can call home. It is a privilege we all share, and which my familial bonds make a very personal issue for me.

And I share this affection beyond merely Scotland and its ‘auld enemy’. We Wassalls are a diffuse bunch; I also have family in Wales and many of my earliest memories are of magical holidays on the railway at Blaenau Ffestiniog.

This communality, at the same time both familiar and remote, is what binds us. The common rivalry we share in all arenas - especially sport - is a sign of our fierce independence of identity, which is only fueled by our cultural cross-pollination.

The currency uncertainty (or, more accurately, the thorny certainty of no currency union), the financial sector warnings, the sheer backwards step of diminishing our collective clout at a time of global threat, is enough to make a strong case for the union and should not be cast aside easily.

But the truth is, I don’t care what reasons are chosen or which arguments are held to be the most critical. I just hope when I write to you this time next week, one of these arguments has won the day and this splendid mess of a union has survived.