The National:

A BIG splash in the last few days saw The Times breaking on its front page - “Plan to give all UK Scots vote in next referendum” – with one unnamed UK Cabinet minister saying “One thing is to open up eligibility to all Scots in the UK, not just those living in Scotland.”

This was to over-state things. There was “no plan” and Downing Street is not conceiving of a referendum anytime soon if they can help it – but strangely they cannot stop talking about one.

This story brought forth all the usual responses. There were the denouncements of “blood and soil nationalism”, “ethnic citizenship” and the spectre raised that “if expatriates thwarted the majority verdict in Scotland it would create major political problems”.

Then there were those who liked the idea of enfranchising a global “Scottish diaspora” and who felt it was “offensive … that we were excluded” by being Scots not living in Scotland and not having a vote in 2014.

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All so far as much as you would expect. James Mitchell of Edinburgh University observed: “Altering the franchise to gain advantage in a future referendum on the Scottish question will only feed the impression that London seeks to win by fair means or foul.”

Former civil servant and academic Jim Gallagher stated that it had “obvious objections” including working out “who is Scottish enough, and why should they vote in something that affects them little more than other UK citizens”.

It was left to Ben Thomson, former chair of Reform Scotland, to make the case, commenting that “the idea of extending the vote further to more Scots is a worthy one”, adding a note of caution: “although it is hard to know where to draw the line without it looking like jerrymandering [sic].”

There are problems with this new Unionist line.

First, 2014 created the precedent of how the vote was held – which throws challenges and constraints on both the Yes and No sides – including the nature of the franchise.

Second, it just looks like desperation, not having any message discipline even at the top, throwing out any dangerous arguments into the public realm whatever the cost to your own side, and looking for tactical fixes and missing bigger problems – such as lack of strategy and factors influencing this debate beyond Scotland.

There is also the issue that it is just not going to happen.

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The Spectator’s Scotland editor Alex Massie responded to this story with the following advice: “As there is nothing this Prime Minister can say that will strengthen the Union, he ostensibly seeks to defend, indifference is preferable to interest. Indifference at least allows the possibility Johnson may obey the first law of politics: first, don’t make matters worse.”

What Massie’s take misses – and the UK Cabinet minister quoted completely ignores – is that the Scottish question is about many things – and not all of them are about Scotland. Thus one of the defining sets of dynamics and factors in the Scottish self-government debate is the nature of the UK, the British limited form of democracy, the archaic, centralising British state (particularly in relation to England but the devolved governments as well), and the harsh, punitive character of British capitalism.

A UK Government, politics and public conversation which created a popular alliance that attempted to address, reform and democratise all of the above – namely the very fundamentals of what is wrong with British politics and society – could have a chance of remaking the Scottish debate. This would be because Scotland as a nation and political community would sit in a very different landscape and Union.

This would involve creating a UK which was a partnership of nations and regions, that swept away the cobwebs of undemocracy at the heart of the political centre, that remade that centre, abolished the Empire State mindset at its core, and tackled the economic and social inequalities which define British capitalism.

That is a wishlist longer and more ambitious than a Gordon Brown manifesto. It would have to entail a popular coalition larger, deeper and more radical than New Labour at its peak in 1997 – such would be the scale of opposition it would face from the most reactionary, anti-democratic elements in the British establishment.

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Suffice to say, this is not going to happen. But what it means is that the Scottish question is not going to go away – until there is another vote on Scotland’s constitutional status – while the UK remains at its core unreformed, undemocratic and unequal.

The above matters more than Massie’s argument that Unionists should be “saying as little as possible” for now and that “careless talk is far more dangerous than silence” in relation to the Union. All it displays is that it is true that loose talk and the flying of kites in public in highly sensitive areas should not be encouraged if you don’t want to damage your own side.

But it also points to something much deeper and profound that is beyond the absence of a coherent strategy on the pro-Union side. That is that the pro-Union case does not recognise the multiple crises – economic, social, democratic and geo-political – which define the state of the Union.

Moreover, not only do they have little grasp of the malaise at the heart of the Union, they have no comprehension of the scale of reform and overhaul needed to remake its cause. And without that the Scottish debate will remain alive and kicking – a fundamental the pro-Union and pro-independence arguments would do well to remember.