In exactly one month it will be referendum polling day, and in two weeks the first postal ballots will be cast.

Time is running out for the nationalists to find the ‘game-changer’ they seek. The white paper, the Commonwealth Games, the Bannockburn anniversary: Alex Salmond convinced himself and his supporters each would be the one to turn the tide of the referendum campaign. The nationalists judged such a ‘moment’ would be required to shift the granite like resistance of Scots to embracing separation.

In the meantime, those of us who believe Scotland has the best of both worlds as part of the United Kingdom have focused on taking our message out to every corner of Scotland. Our message does not need gimmicks or transformative moments to convince people. The case that we are stronger together and that we would be weaker apart has stood the test of time. Under Alistair Darling’s leadership, the Better Together campaign is focussed, energetic and patriotic and we have never made the mistake of taking a single vote for granted.

Over the course of this campaign I have spoken to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh and church halls in my constituency. I have taken part in town hall events from Inverness in the north, to Dundee in the east, in the Isle of Mull in the west and to Ayrshire in the south. This past weekend I spoke at the Hindu Mandir in the west end of Glasgow and knocked on hundreds of doors in my native Renfrewshire. Later this week I will lay a stone at the ‘Cairn of Friendship’ in Gretna before taking part in a Q&A in Dumfries.

Wherever I go, the majority of Scots want to know the answer to a straightforward question: how would separation affect their daily lives?

The nationalists thought they could bluff their way through without having the answers to even the most fundamental questions on which the future wellbeing of Scotland and its people depend. As we approach the referendum’s finish line, Scots are scrutinising each claim closer than ever and the nationalist’s project is unravelling. Their campaign, based upon weak foundations and held together by blind assertion, is crumbling before their eyes.

The white paper – all 650 pages of it – was billed as answering all the questions but actually exposes the nationalists’ lack of answers. Ask a nationalist a question about the crucial issues that affect all our lives and you will be given a page number not a fact. The white paper has just one page, for just one year, on our nation’s finances. It can tell you our time zone will not change but cannot tell you what our currency will change to.

Their lack of answers was exposed at another supposed game-changer for the nationalists – the TV debate a fortnight ago, where time after time Alex Salmond was unable to say what his ‘plan B’ was for Scotland’s currency. It really does beggar belief that a party which has tried to break up Britain for more than 80 years and which has been campaigning in the referendum for more than two years, still cannot answer basic questions on what our currency would be after a yes vote.

Last week, Scottish finance secretary John Swinney claimed that he was having technical discussions with the Bank of England on a currency union. That was not true and the Bank of England took the remarkable step of making a public statement to say that what they were saying was untrue. Imagine how people would have felt if they had cast their postal vote after hearing Mr Swinney, only to find out the next day he was not telling the truth.

With a month to go, Scots are calling time on the nationalists’s half-baked double speak. A campaign that started by branding their opponents as scaremongers for telling the truth has ended up as the purveyors of threats and doom-laden predictions that owe more to desperation than to reality.

Take their claims on the NHS, which owes nothing to nationalism and will not be protected or advanced by nationalism. Health – like education – is entirely devolved to Scotland. The only people who could privatise our NHS right now are the Scottish National party. Scotland’s devolved NHS still draws strength from its links with the NHS throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, whether it is for NHS research, pooling medical expertise or delivering specialist treatments. Why should we put up borders and put this at risk?

Whether on the NHS, currency or cuts the nationalists deflect questions because they cannot answer them. The independent Institute of Fiscal Studies has estimated that an independent Scotland would have to impose £6bn of cuts or tax rises after a yes vote over and above those already planned. That is more than Scotland spends on schools, more than the entire budget for pensions and equivalent to half the current NHS budget. The greatest fear Scots should have about the NHS is how the nationalists would find those £6 billion worth of cuts.

Surely a better arrangement is for Scotland to have the hospitals and schools we want, while retaining the strength of the United Kingdom which enables £1200 more per head to be spent on them every year than south of the border. This is the best of both worlds, and it is what Scotland has with devolution.

That is why as the nationalists look with increasing desperation for a game-changer and there is nothing that they will not say to try to close a gap in the polls in the coming days. The truth is, if Scots believe in a properly funded NHS, free at the point of use, they have to vote for Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom.

In the closing days of this campaign, our case is clear: let us use the strength of the United Kingdom to make Scotland stronger. Let us say ‘no thanks’ to dismantling the clinical links between the health service north and south of the border, our economy, our financial system and our welfare system and then trying to rebuild them just with fewer parts.

Scots can put that case forward with confidence and with optimism because it is the best way to serve our country and our country knows it. With just two weeks to go until the first vote is cast, our task is to turn the steely determination of the majority of Scots to stay in the United Kingdom into votes.

On 18 September we have the chance to vote to work with our neighbours, to keep the best of both worlds – and to make Scotland stronger. That is why millions of us are saying ‘no thanks’.

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Douglas Alexander MP is shadow foreign secretary

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Photo: Rev Stan