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Comment by vixin | Hacker News Reader

Not true. They will once they understand the significance of the Westminster parliament losing 52 Scottish Labour MPs which would leave the rest of the UK with a strong Tory majority.

If the vote is YES the Prime Minister in office when independence takes effect (most likely to be Labour) would certainly have to resign.

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As far as I understand, there's only been a couple of elections where losing the Labour majority in Scotland would have made a difference for Labour.

It's true that a Labour government would likely have a far smaller majority without the Scottish MPs, but when Labour has won, it has usually been with far greater majorities than that.

It would have in the most recent general election, while the general consensus is that hung parliaments[1] are only going to become more common if not the norm in future.

[1]That is, no clear majority, requiring a coalition government

"If the vote is YES the Prime Minister in office when independence takes effect (most likely to be Labour) would certainly have to resign."

I doubt it, if Scotland votes yes it'd probably cripple Cameron's career, not whoever becomes PM after the vote.

I sometimes wonder if this was exactly Osbourne's plan

Part of me wants to say that gives Osbourne a lot more credit than he deserves, part of me thinks he's probably shrewd enough to have a go at it with some level of success.

You think Boris wouldn't be the heir apparent in that case, not Osbourne?

If independence happens (I don't think it will), this will be re-writing of borders of a country long term. The political paradigm will adapt.

Long term, the Westminster system gravitates towards a two main party or coalition equilibrium. Scottish Labour will be gone. Maybe the Tories will pull right and cede some of the centre. Maybe Labour will pull right.

This is actually a pretty minimal effect historically:

http://theweebluebook.com/assets/images/uk-govts.png

"most likely to be Labour" - er, what? Ed Milliband? I would say it's 50/50 as to who the next PM would be.

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