SCOTTISH nationalist MSP Stewart Maxwell derides Ed Miliband’s proposal to extend powers to the Scottish Parliament, noting that “Labour can’t even guarantee Ed Miliband will become prime minister.”

He’s right of course. The problem with democracy is that, if it works properly, it’s unpredictable.

If Scotland remains within the United Kingdom, it will be bound by the majority decision of not only Scottish voters but everyone else and there can be no guarantee that positions favoured by Scottish voters won’t be negated by MPs returned from England, Wales and Scotland.

That’s why the Scottish electorate has the choice on September 18 of staying in the UK or going its own way.

Another way of preventing political choices made in Scotland from being overruled is to transfer further powers from Westminster to Holyrood, which would be the preference of many voters in Scotland.

Westminster-based politicians have been slow to understand the widely felt frustrations caused by an overcentralised state that takes little account of Scottish and Welsh national considerations and similar frustrations experienced by English regions.

Labour’s decision to unite with the Tories and Liberal Democrats in the Better Together campaign was a classic mistake of that kind.

The campaign has inevitably been dominated by ruling-class assumptions expounded by the Tories over decades in their defence of the empire against those they consider inferior.

Patronising inferences that Scotland is too small or weak to run its own affairs or attempts to pick a fight over oil revenues or currency unions can be guaranteed to get up Scottish noses.

The Tories and their allies can’t help doing this. It’s part of their DNA.

The real question that people in Scotland, as well as the rest of Britain, should be considering is what the point of constitutional change is.

Is it to make a case that Scotland or the UK is the more appropriate model for working people to submit themselves to the whims of transnational corporations?

Or is the point at issue how well a state model can assist resistance to international capitalism and put the interests of the working class first?

Scotland’s SNP government has made its economic priorities clear. 

It intends to slash corporation tax even more than the conservative coalition in London is doing to attract overseas direct investment in a similar model to that deployed earlier by Ireland.

Pro-independence Scots to the left of the SNP believe that this approach could be superseded by a revitalised socialist movement after the link with England, Wales and Northern Ireland is broken.

However, there seems no automatic reason why this should be so, especially given the recent fractured past of some left formations in Scotland.

Depending on the Scottish left to come together after independence is no less a gamble than expecting the left in Scotland, Wales and England to unite in support of substantial social change in a federal Britain.

Miliband’s suggestion of devolving housing benefit, the work programme and income tax, including the right to raise higher rates, has not emerged from a vacuum.

It reflects demands for greater devolution across Britain and indicates a realisation that even in a single state one size need not necessarily fit all.

The decision of whether to pursue independence rests with Scottish voters, but plumping for unity in action across our borders to push for substantive change must be a priority for all.