How Scotland became a politics wonk’s dream

“There’s something in the air up here, life has been breathed into the body politic and that’s good for everyone.”

As my first Scottish tour of duty ahead of the independence referendum comes to a close it seems appropriate to reflect on what I’ve learned.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that keen on the idea of leaving the Westminster bubble to return north and talk to ‘ordinary people’.

I’m a Westminster correspondent I talk to ministers and MPs, psephologists and press officers, wonks and nerds, not real people.

But the independence referendum is most likely the biggest political event of my lifetime, certainly to date and including all my years to come if it turns out to be a Yes vote, so special times call for special measures.

I arrived in Edinburgh to find little changed since my last visit except the trams are now running clean, slow, unloved would be my conclusion on them.

But once I got talking to people on the doorsteps with Labour, at the Scottish parliament with the SNP, and on the streets with just my notebook it’s clear something massive is happening in Scotland.

Ordinary people are talking about politics.

This is not unheralded in human history, but it’s hugely unusual in modern times.

I heard very little cynicism on the streets.

But then it’s hard to be cynical when a speech by Archie Macpherson of all people is the talking point of the week. The reaction to that strange turn of events can only be to quote the bona fide broadcasting legend himself Oooft!

If nothing else the referendum debate has engaged people in politics in a way that is as impressive as it is important.

In fact the Westminster correspondents obsessing about Ukip in London would do well to follow me north not only because they’ll find little of the disillusionment driving Farage’s success in the south but also because it’s the perfect environment for obsessives everyone wants to talk politics.

In London (or indeed on holiday in Greece as was the case earlier this summer) I find myself regularly having to make the case for politics, for voting, explaining why it matters.

In Scotland right now it’s taken for granted. Even those I spoke to who aren’t voting had thought about it and come to that decision not as a result of apathy or lazy thinking but for usually well-argued reasons.

I was struck mentally, not in the Jim Murphy/egg interface sense by someone I met in Alloa. Young, female and working class she fits the classic, stereotypical description of someone who has given up on voting. Yet she’d made the effort to watch the Salmond-Darling debate last week in an attempt to make a more informed decision on September 18. It only involved turning on the telly but that’s a huge leap for those people turned off by politics.

If nothing else re-connecting Scotland’s society and its politics stand as Alex Salmond’s achievement. And what of Salmond?

We political correspondents are used to parroting the line that he is the pre-eminent politician of his age. That remains true. But there’s a well of distaste for the man in Scotland.

Maybe that’s inevitable of someone who flies so high in their chosen field, especially such a public figure. But it may bode badly for the referendum result.

I spoke to a pensioner in the north east who’d voted SNP since her teens and admitted she’d waited all her life for a shot at independence. Now it’s here she’s sure how she’ll vote.

Something about Salmond is stopping her heart from overruling her head, in her words. She doesn’t trust him.

I heard the same refrain on the doorsteps of Glasgow, in areas the SNP must win if they are to win the September 18 poll.

If the Yes side lose it will be hard for him not to shoulder a significant amount of the blame, however unreasonable that may be.

Remarkably, as we finally enter September 2014 there is still an ‘if’ about whether Yes win or lose the referendum. The polls wiggle slightly but No retain a solid lead just as they did last year and the year before that.

Looking at the bald figures in London it’s easy to see why politicians and political correspondents there write the referendum off as a foregone conclusion. But in Scotland the atmosphere is different.

The polls may still be proved right. But there’s something in the air up here, life has been breathed into the body politic and that’s good for everyone.

I’m heading back to London for now but I’ll be back before the poll and do you know what? I’m looking forward to it.