Which country has been facing a bigger existential crisis lately, UK or US?

[IceAgeComing]

The latter thing about policy being allowed to "drift" is also important since arguably that separated the two bits even more.  An example that comes to mind quickly is the fact that I'm pretty sure that NHS Scotland's organisational structure is a lot closer to the structure of the whole NHS in 1979 than the England and Wales NHS's frankly weird structure - because Thatcher was focused on England and Wales on those sort of issues the Scottish NHS managed to dodge lots of the market-based reforms introduced in the 80s and 90s.  I'd also argue that it gave us a better base to build the Health Service on but that's something which others might disagree with.

I think that lots of people are overstating what Scotland's reaction to a leave vote would be.  I wouldn't entirely trust opinion polls on that quite yet since people generally aren't very good at considering a hypothetical and the polls swing dramatically when you get close to the referendum (look at both the independence and the EU referendum) but generally there doesn't seem to have been a significant swing towards independence according to polls asking about an independence referendum after a Leave vote on Thursday, nor really an insatiable demand for one if it happens.  I'm sure that there'll be a referendum if that happens (I don't think that it will) but its not going to be a landslide either way, it'll be at least as close as the one two years ago was.

I don't think that we'll see a successful vote anytime soon if we aren't dragged out of the EU.  I imagine that international observers may have thought that independence was certain in Quebec after the PQ were re-elected after the 1980 referendum there when as we now know it really wasn't, and I think that we'll be similar unless you get a Westminster government that's incredibly hostile towards Scotland.  You have a minority of people shouting for a new referendum every day but they are small and frankly meaningless; the most important people are the "soft" voters who I don't think have any appetite for another indyref - I was a soft Yes and I have absolutely no interest in reopening the question, and honestly would probably vote No if one was held now, although probably Yes if EU membership was at risk if we staying in the UK.