The fact it's headline news for William Hague to suggest an EU 'Out' vote could lead to the break-up of the UK suggests some people outside Scotland think that Mr Hague was saying something that nobody had said before.

Very little Scottish news now percolates south of the border, and that which is selected for English consumption tends to reported through a fairly London-centric lens. Complex developing debates are reduced to smash and grab snapshots. Nuance and context never have a chance.

My mother in law received a Christmas card from a friend in England that included the question: "Why do the Scots hate us so much?"

Said mother in law was bewildered. She moved to Scotland from Yorkshire more than a decade ago and has never experienced anything that made her feel an outsider, let alone 'hated'. She wrote back saying how happy she is in Scotland and inviting her friend to experience the welcome Scotland has to offer by coming to visit in 2016.

Today in the Daily Telegraphⁱ former foreign secretary and on-time Conservative party leader William Hague warns that the UK would be foolish to vote to leave the EU, reminding readers that the SNP's trigger to reignite the process towards a further referendum on Scottish independence is only one 'material change' away.

Mr Hague says: "Scottish nationalists would jump at the chance to reverse the argument of last year's referendum – now it would be them saying they would stay in Europe without us. They would have the pretext for their second referendum, and the result of it could well be too close to call."

For the Scottish Government an overall UK vote to exit the EU at the same time as Scotland voted to stay would be a very big 'material change'.

Mr Hague's column was the top story on the UK BBC for a time this morning. Clearly because we are just two sleeps away from Christmas Day, and the machine that feeds UK news to UK news outlets has already gone on holiday, there's not a lot of competition for the top news slot. However, many in Scotland will have questioned by the UK BBC chose to recycle a story that is, from a Scottish perspective, weeks old.

The apparent novelty of Mr Hague's comments and the cheery Christmas greeting to my mother in law are linked.

Both are the result of the fracturing of news coverage between Scotland and England.

At one extreme is the Sun's ability to have a position for Scottish readers on nationalism that's never repeated to its consumers in England. Less extreme is the almost universal practice of providing Scottish editions for UK national newspapers.

A year of commuting from Edinburgh to London created frequent moments of confusion. I would arrive in the office clutching the Edinburgh airport-bought Scottish edition of the Times, Telegraph or Sun, pointing out stories to colleagues who, despite having read what they had thought was the same newspaper, had no idea what I was talking about.

Not only do the Scottish editions allow readers in England to have newspapers free from irrelevant tartan trivia. They also allow some of the more colourful reporting, in England, of the evolution of Scottish political preferences to go largely unchallenged by those whom the stories are about.

This narrowcasting alters the perspective of politicians as well as the public.

I, in common with many others, always said that the 2014 Scottish referendum was there for the UK political parties to lose as much as for the 'Yes' campaign to win. Misunderstanding the political driving forces of a nation that you seldom read much about because you are in Westminster or Downing Street may affect your appreciation of what its population wants.

David Cameron didn't want to be the PM who presided over the disintegration of the UK in 2014.

Ironically he is granting himself a second chance to be that PM with the promise of an EU vote that doesn't have to be unanimous across the four UK nations. Regardless of its outcome, Mr Cameron's one-nation approach to the EU referendum will be enough for Scots to feel disenfranchised enough for the SNP to feel it has the popular support it needs to seek a second Scottish independence referendum.

ⁱDaily Telegraph