When my family go to Aberdeenshire at Christmas to lay flowers on my father's grave and visit my mother at her care home will we be viewed as Foreigners in a strange land?

For the very first time in all the years that I have been involved in politics I am scared. Scared that on Thursday the good people of Scotland will vote with their hearts rather than their heads. Well, how does it affect we English? Will it be along the lines of the politically illiterate rantings of that great Tory thinker Nadine Dorries of ‘why should be pay for them to eat their deep fried Mars bars’ ? I suspect that these sort of views will be held by a vociferous minority. The majority down south will shrug their shoulders in sorrow rather than anger and as the months roll on will witness Scotland descend from prosperity to a ghetto of unemployment, spiralling debts and failing public services. But it will not just be capital that will be evaporating faster than a snowball in hell, but that amazing pool of talent that has made the Scots one of the most innovative and talented people in the world.

This has been the the most ill tempered political debates that I have ever witnessed. The SNP leadership and their outriders are a deeply unpleasant bunch. The chilling words of former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars about a day of reckoning, although disassociated by the leadership, lifts the veil over the dark reality of Salmond and his cronies; they are very, very left wing and vindictive. To see the delightfully reasonable Jim Murphy being shouted down on the stump as a traitor, a paedophile and every other revolting insult they could muster was troubling. The nationalist agit prop have cast a dark stain over this debate which will be remembered for years.

It is not worth rehearsing the arguments of the the improbability of Scotland keeping the pound, joining the EU and NATO. Nor the flight of capital, jobs and aspiration. Does Scotland really want to be transformed into an intolerant Socialist state, where there will be hardly any rich left to make their pips squeak? If so fire up the Quattro now and send for President Hollande. Or maybe they could be a client state of Russia.

What saddens me is that when my family visit Aberdeenshire this Christmas to put flowers on my father’s grave and visit my mother in her care home will be be foreigners in a strange land?