Editorial: ​Ten years on from independence referendum, Scotland shows how separatists will never rest in their attempts to break up the UK

My how time moves. It is already 10 years since Scotland voted on independence.

​That referendum was a sobering one for unionists. When it was launched more than a year before it happened, support for staying in the UK was far ahead, around two to one. No-one seriously thought that the Scots would break away.

David Cameron, indeed, seemed to hold the plebiscite on the assumption that the pro UK side would win, as indeed he thought that the pro EU side would win the Brexit vote.

It was a foolish calculation. When you ask people to vote on such key matters about which there can be great emotion, opinions can move quite quickly.

If the Scots had gone, as opinion polls shortly before polling opened suggested they might, the UK would look very different today. Northern Ireland’s position within it would have been greatly damaged, perhaps even fatally so.

It is encouraging that voters in Scotland pulled back from the brink and it is to be hoped that voters in NI would do likewise in a border poll. But there is every possibility that nationalists when in the ballot box would feel a surge towards an all-Ireland on the basis that they might never get such a chance ago.

After the 2014 poll, the then SNP leader Alex Salmond said it was a once in a generation vote. Now he says every nation “deserves a second chance”.

It is all a reminder of a foolish provision in the Belfast Agreement: that a border poll cannot be held within seven years of a previous one. While that does not mean it would be held every seven years, in effect republicans would demand such. If the last 10 years has flown, seven would have been even faster.

Now more than ever it is important to recognise a point that Hilary Benn has made: there is no need to clarify the grounds for a border poll. The grounds are clear, in the Belfast Agreement. And they are not even close to being met.

You can’t give separatists an inch, or they take a mile.