Sir Hamish: 'Scotland is different. If we really did want to leave we would'

How flattering that you ask my advice about Salmond. I thought the polished young advisor had forgotten the weary old official.

If you read what's left of the Scottish Press you'd think we'd had the second coming. But up here in Inverbogle I can't say it feels like a new dawn. Same drizzle as before.

So here's my first advice: calm down, dears, it's only an election. And remember what it was about - who was to run Scottish domestic affairs. Kilted loonies won't be stopping cars at the Border. Last time anybody asked, the Scots were getting less, not more, keen on independence. This was about the "wee pretendy parliament".

Now I like that wee parliament. That used to make me unpopular with your lot in the old days, but you've come round. More important, the Scots like it, too. They want someone to run it well, and stand up for them. And finally, they've fallen out of love with Labour.

Small earthquake, not many dead then? Not quite. I toddled back early from the Inverbogle Arms to answer your letter because young Mr Salmond now has five years to manoeuvre Scotland as far as he can get us out of the UK. That's all he's been gassing about since.

And he is a one-man source of wind power. So you need somebody to stand up to him. It's not too hard. I remember when he was an uncertain wee laddie, getting mocked in Westminster, and Labour had a fella that was up for him a year or two ago.

Here's some advice from an old bureaucrat. Take a personal grip on this. At the end of the day it's the future of the UK, not just Scotland. That's the Prime Minister's job - you don't want run a country with bits falling off.

And here's some advice from an old Scot. Scotland is different. If we really did want to leave we would.

But we don't. The Scots have long wanted some sort of home rule. Nowadays that means elected politicians in a parliament. Quite right. Despite all my years working in it, I still think democracy is better than all the other sorts of government. We get the leaders we deserve, even one who sounds like all the worst bits of a Burns supper.

Now I've seen plenty of fellas like this in my time. Romantic rhetoric about national identity, and an unerring instinct for whatever levers of power they can get their hands on.

So suddenly we see an overnight conversion from independence to daft ideas like confederation. Now let's have a better relationship inside Britain by all means, especially about taxes and spending. But don't let him get away with nonsense, like the useful idiots in what passes for public discourse in Scotland. We either send MPs to Westminster or we don't. And if we don't, we can't expect to have a say in what it does. That's independence - and it's just what Alec doesn't want.

• Sir Hamish McMuffin KCB was High Commissioner to Neranga, and Head of the Department of Scottish Administrative Affairs