The question of Scotland’s future has come to dominate international news and rightly so. For the British establishment, this was meant to be a year evoking the “shared sacrifice” of the United Kingdom’s Scots, English, Welsh, and Irish a century after the imperial slaughter of 1914. Instead, it has become a living nightmare as the loss of empire and industrial decline appears to be culminating in the dismantling of the three-centuries-old British state.

When Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to the Scottish independence referendum in 2012, there was little alarm. Now polls indicate the vote is too close to call. A full 97 percent of eligible Scottish voters, around 4.3 million, are registered to participate. Momentum is with the Yes to independence movement, and caricatured notions of apathy have been overturned by the voices of those announcing the arrival of a new Scotland.

This has produced panic and an all-out carrot-and-stick campaign to encourage opposition to independence. Prime Minister David Cameron, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, and Labour leader Ed Miliband abandoned their normal duties in London’s Westminster to campaign frantically for Scottish hearts and minds.