Local government has been the spectre at the referendum feast, and lot less blood curdling than Banquo’s in the ‘Scottish play’. Macbeth associations bring the tourists to Cawdor castle near Inverness, which is home to Highland Council, the UK’s largest by area, but which has been of small account in the independence stakes.

Some deny this. The Edinburgh University academic Professor Charlie Jeffrey has been blogging about exciting local conversations about the distribution of power and inevitable change, whatever the result.

But (the beauty of local government) what may be true of the islands isn’t necessarily true of the cities. Councillors in, for example, Shetland and Argyll and Bute have been demanding new recognition of their areas’ particularity and ‘total place’ control of welfare and other central funding streams.