The Disunited Kingdom: Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."

From: The Disunited Kingdom: A Royal Mess -- The ineptitude of Britain’s politicians have them scrambling to stop Scottish independence with only a week to go. But Britain’s inability to handle Scotland should raise flags in Brussels and Washington as well - Walter Russell Mead, the-american-interest.com

Americans are conditioned by our own history to take these matters more seriously. The threat to the “United” part of the United Kingdom having emerged, Americans would expect a PM to fight it with all his might—if not by burning the Scottish equivalent of Atlanta (Glasgow?) to the ground, then at least by making the campaign against secession his highest priority. Instead, Cameron delegated the campaign to Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer—a second-level leader of the opposition party—and left well enough alone. Darling, whose main qualifications appear to be that he’s Scottish and Not A Tory, formulated a campaign, “Better Together”, that was by all accounts hopelessly lame.