Promises must be honoured quickly

The consequences of a "Yes" vote in Scotland would have been almost unmanageable and taken decades to fully implement and recognise.

It is questionable if the scale of change demanded by a “Yes” vote could have been implemented in a timeframe that would have satisfied Scottish nationalists or those forced to make concessions to facilitate change. EU forces opposed to the breakaway, and the precedent it would set, might have questioned relationships taken for granted.

Britain would have been entangled in a constitutional crisis and a resolution might have proved more elusive than has been imagined.