The Conservatives look to the Liberal Democrats to save the Union

Michael Moore is unlucky to lose his Cabinet position today, even if he was lucky to gain it in the first place - Danny Alexander was the Coalition's first Scottish Secretary and moved to the Treasury only after David Laws' resignation. By all accounts he did a good job and his courtesy and reasonableness did much to calm the debate over independence.

But I cannot be anything other than pleased to see the more combative Alistair Carmichael take his place for the referendum campaign. Alistair is one of my favourite Liberal Democrat MPs and I have done my best to mythologise him as the Chief Whip in Ad Lib.

What has gone unremarked today is that, with only one MP in Scotland, the Conservatives are wholly impotent in this campaign. David Cameron is keeping well out of it, concluding that his every intervention would win a thousand more supporters for independence.

So the Conservatives are dependent upon the Liberal Democrats to save the Union.

I hope the more thoughtful members of what used to be the Conservative and Unionist Party are wondering how they have come to this. But I doubt we shall receive any gratitude from that party as a whole.