Leader: Fiddles are tuned in Scotland as flames lick at Europe

AGAINST the background of the deepening crisis in the euro- zone, the bickering over Scotland’s independence referendum has the sound of fiddles being tuned while the European, and by implication the Scottish, economy burns.

It now seems more probable than improbable that the eurozone will crumble. The consequences for British and Scottish manufacturers, for whom Europe is a market accounting for more than a third of production, will be dire.

In that event, people would be quite entitled to demand that British political leaders of whatever stripe should come together to steer the economy through the most violent economic storm in living memory. But the portents for that, now being set out by Prime Minister David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond in their ungainly two-stepping over the referendum, are not good.

Mr Cameron has finally agreed to meet Mr Salmond to discuss the issue.

Mr Salmond claims this is at the sixth time of asking. Mr Cameron, however, is insisting that Mr Salmond should meet Scottish Secretary Michael Moore first. That, presumably, is what Mr Cameron has told Mr Salmond on the previous five occasions.

This looks like a familiar and entirely tedious political status game. Mr Salmond may be anxious to look like a prime minister (of an independent Scotland) and so he thinks he should only be meeting other prime ministers. Mr Cameron may be anxious to avoid conferring such high status on Mr Salmond and thus is keen to make the first minister toil through the foothills of Cabinet ministers before he can get to see the higher political reaches.

Does anyone really care about this? Will the jostling over who is to meet whom at whose invitation and under whose roof make a blind jot of difference to how people actually vote when referendum day comes around?

We rather doubt it. Voters are likely to be rather more impressed by politicians who, instead of counting how many angels may dance on the head of a pin, get down to some straightforward dealing in order to set out clear terms and conditions for this referendum, which will be the most important constitutional decision any Scot has taken for more than 300 years.

Meantime, as this playground spat over arrangements for an event in just under three years’ time has sputtered along, dark and menacing clouds have been massing overhead. Talks on how to restructure Greece’s debt resume on Wednesday, with the real threat of a disorderly default looming.

Such an event would raise fears the same thing may happen to Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and perhaps even Italy, by the end of January. Their borrowing costs may then become unsustainable, threatening more defaults and a huge crisis for European banks. And even if the Greek talks result in agreement, the same crisis may simply have been deferred. And in that event, what powers Scotland has or has not will be quite irrelevant.