He struts the world diplomatic stage and savours the longest honeymoon ever enjoyed in Downing Street. Tony Blair has shown a year can be a wonderful time in politics. Still, it seems even the relatively young occupant of Number 10 cannot set boundaries to the march of the ancient Scottish nation.

And if he doesn't watch out there is a danger he could eventually be marked in history as the man responsible for breaking up Britain. The prospect of a devolved parliament is not sating the Scots' craving for autonomy.[Q L]

An opinion poll in the Glasgow Herald earlier this week showed the Scottish National Party five points ahead of Labour north of the border. Equally startling, a Scottish Television survey suggested almost half of all Scots now believe the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, would make a better head of the forthcoming Scottish Parliament than Labour's Scottish leader, Donald Dewar.

Even more unnerving for the Blair administration, more than two-thirds of respondents said they expect an independent Scotland within two decades.

Labour's Scottish strategists were so startled they outlined plans a few days ago to speed devolution. The Edinburgh assembly will now legislate from July next year, six months before originally envisaged.

And the hapless Mr Dewar has hurriedly hired a new spin doctor to help him address his own personal PR crisis. He's obviously terrified his dream of doubling up as Scottish Secretary in Parliament could be wrecked by rampant nationalism.

But Mr Dewar's political fate could well be decided by factors beyond his control. The extent to which he is at the mercy of external developments in the new world disorder was dramatically demonstrated when it emerged recently Dounreay, in the far north of Scotland, had been secretly lined up to become the reprocessing site for highly radioactive uranium from the former Soviet Union.

The SNP leader seized on revelations of the clandestine deal between Tony Blair and President Clinton - leaked to the New York Times - to accuse Mr Blair of "prostituting Scotland as a world nuclear dustbin."

Mr Dewar's protestations that the Scottish Office had been "completely involved" in the discussions leading up to the Dounreay decision have done little to dispel the anger expressed in the last few weeks.

There is a widespread suspicion that, for all his radical talk about decentralising power, Mr Blair is an assiduous control freak bent on ensuring Scotland has a puppet parliament dominated by his acolytes.

Labour's London overlords certainly seem determined to vet candidates for the first elections to the Edinburgh assembly next May, just as they will do everything in their power to stop "Red Ken" Livingstone being elected Mayor of London.

Both these developments reveal a fundamental contradiction of Blairism. On the one hand we have a British prime minister who has made history by finally honouring Gladstone's plan for "Home Rule All Round". On the other, Mr Blair practises a form of democratic centralism which would have pleased Lenin.

Donald Dewar is the ideal "Father of the Scottish Nation" in Mr Blair's eyes. The struggle for Scottish home rule - in stark contrast to Irish home rule - has always been entirely constitutional. As a long-time Scots advocate (barrister) who prefers precise reason to passionate rhetoric, Labour's Scottish leader embodies that legalistic tradition.

But there are several reasons why the Scottish electorate may now be prepared to live more dangerously than Donald Dewar would desire.

Firstly, and most importantly, the Scots have had their fill of elected dictatorships in London after two decades of New Right rule, which they rejected throughout the Thatcherite ascendancy. As John McAllion, the left-wing MP who plans to quit Westminster for the Holyrood assembly observed recently: "Old Labour was never unelectable in Scotland."

But even when their heavy industrial base was being wiped off the map by Thatcherism, the Scots were not driven to separatism. Their caution on the constitutional issue was partly a nervous reaction to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which undoubtedly played some part in delaying the attainment of Scottish devolution.

A sizeable number of Scottish Roman Catholics used to fear that a self-governing Scotland might become another Northern Ireland, with its own version of a Stormont in Edinburgh.

Such fears among the Catholic minority have faded drastically in the last few decades as Scotland's Catholics climbed to many leadership positions in Scottish society, including in the SNP. Although a Protestant himself, Alex Salmond has done much more than any previous nationalist leader to court Scottish Catholics and allay their fears about home rule.

Religious sectarianism has not been eradicated, but it will hopefully become even less of a force in Scottish life if the Belfast Agreement holds.

In that wonderful eventuality, representatives of the Scottish parliament would play a role, along with Welsh assembly members, in the proposed Council of the Isles.

Salmond fondly rhapsodises about the Republic of Ireland and openly fantasises about turning Scotland into a Celtic Tiger. The SNP leader, an economist, must have been delighted by Ireland's leap-froggin g over Britain in the world league table of economic performance.

Even before Ireland's boom made it a proud exemplar of the SNP's stated goal, "Independence in Europe", Scotland's most famous nationalist, Sean Connery, used to tell his compatriots: "You need to want freedom as much as the Irish wanted it."

Connery was another major source of discomfort for the Scottish Secretary recently. Mr Dewar had to endure a media roasting when it was revealed he had blocked the granting of a knighthood to the actor in the last New Year's honours list. Not just Scottish nationalists were enraged by this snub to Scotland's mega-star.

Quite why anyone who yearns to break up Britain should simultaneously aspire to a Great British gong was a question never addressed in the whole controversy.