So the great debate on the break-up of the United Kingdom has begun. But much of the heat has so far been generated by the process of the referendum – two questions or three, this year or in two years time – rather than matters of substance.

My concern is that the debate is being led by politicians rather than ordinary voters. As a result, people will tend to line up according to their party political inclinations, rather than assess the proposals on their merits. And this plays into the hands of the slippery Mr Salmond, who is by far the most popular (and wily) politician north of the border. Many of those who voted SNP last year did so because they wanted Salmond as first minister – not because they wanted an independent Scotland.

My experiences of working for the “No” campaign (against joining the Euro) and the campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty provide helpful lessons. The key one is that there needs to be a unified, non-party-political campaign against independence, which means that whoever heads the campaign – Mr Unionist – should not be a politician. Ideally, he or she should be a succeassful businessman or respected academic.

There is no reason why the political parties can’t be seen to support the Unionist cause but English-sounding voices from south of the border should be banned if possible. Salmond would like nothing better than to portray the referendum as a chance to free Scotland from the colonial English yoke, so the arguments in favour of the union must be made by Scotsmen and women.

And we urgently need someone to produce some positive arguments in this respect. So far, the Unionist arguments have been (a) independence would be a disaster for Scotland, (b) if not a disaster then very difficult (c) Scotland would have to accept its share of the national debt and the RBS toxic assets and (d) the Scots’ standard of living would suffer if they left the UK. These may well be true but they are so negative. I want people to vote for staying in the union because they recognise it as a good thing.

People should certainly be told what the consequences of leaving the union would be, but that is no more than half the story. They need to know WHY Scotland should remain part of the United Kingdom. And I don’t think phrases such as “we’re stronger together” are the answer. The Unionist campaign must explain why we are stronger together.

The problem is that, after 300 years, the benefits of union are taken for granted and are so much of our daily routine that we need to be reminded what exactly they are. If this campaign succeeds in making all of more aware of just how beneficial the union has been – and still is – then the whole exercise will not have been wasted.

Britain’s media is in danger of becoming overly focused on the eurozone crisis. There are a number of valid reasons for this: EU countries acount for half the UK’s trade in manufactured goods, it’s relatively cheap to cover compared with other parts of the world, most people can find it on the map and watching other Europeans (particularly the French and Italians) struggling to escape from the mire is very entertaining.

Nevertheless, it is probably not the most serious threat to our economy. That dubious honour must, in my opinion, go to Iran. Until last weekend, there had been very little coverage – and even less analysis – of what is going on in that part of the Middle East.

While we all know that Iran has a very serious nuclear programme which no-one belives is for purely peaceful purposes, many are unaware that there is actually a low-level war already going on between Iran and Israel. On the one hand, Iran has been supplying Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza with increasingly sophisticated rockets and, on the other, Israeli intelligence is widely believed to be behind the assassination of four Iranian nuclear scientists (the latest one today), explosions at a number of military sites and the development of the Stuxnet computer virus, which has slowed down Iranian nuclear progress.

Currently US forces are in Israel “on exercise” and US warships are in the eastern Mediterranean. Iran has been test-firing missiles and is talking about closing the Straits of Hormuz if she is attacked. Given that about a third of the world’s oil supplies are shipped through the Straits of Hormuz, it is easy to see how their closure could disrupt the global economy. In fact there has already been a sharp hike in the oil price on the back of these fears.

The reality is that Iran is almost certain to become a nuclear power sometime this year. Even if Israel launches a pre-emptive strike against a reactor, it is unlikely to be able to destroy the country’s whole nuclear infrastructure. So at the very least, we can expect more disruptive behaviour from Tehran and, quite possibly, the situation could spiral into military conflict. That will do infinitely more damage to the global economy than Greece’s likely exit from the euro.

Not a very happy note with which to open my blog for 2012. But forewarned is…