There was a time when a British general election settled all arguments.

"The people," you would hear, with no irony, "have spoken." In truth, as usual, a minority said one thing while a majority made multiple choices. Nevertheless, few quibbled over the rules.

For seven short weeks David Cameron has behaved as though nothing has changed, as though he remains, in all things, the unquestioned voice of the United Kingdom. Such is the victor's prize. As he criss-crosses Europe trying to drum up support for his scheme to reform the European Union, the Prime Minister does not acknowledge the fact that 63.1 per cent of those who voted in May didn't fancy his party.

As things stand, that's fair enough. No one else has a right to sit in Downing Street. If Mr Cameron is determined to have his "in-out" European referendum he has his Commons majority - or so he hopes - for collateral. He operates in a single political reality. Other realities are available, however.

In one, the leaders of 27 European states have to sit through a 10-minute presentation from the salesman from UK plc when they would rather be wrestling with the issue of migration. If reports from the Brussels summit are anything to go by, that's a fair summary. Apart from the chairman, Poland's Donald Tusk, not a single head of government responded to Mr Cameron while he aired his parochial obsession.

In another, congruent reality, there was news. The Prime Minister, it transpires, will press on with his referendum even if other EU members have not ratified his reforms. This is bizarre. We don't know, specifically, what Mr Cameron hopes to win. We won't know, standing in the polling booths, whether he has actually won anything from the European partners, some of whom might require national votes of their own. The Prime Minister is nevertheless "delighted" that the process of renegotiation is now "properly under way".

Back, then, to British realities. How would a referendum in such circumstances be described as fair? It hardly matters whether you want ever-closer union, a simple free trade area, or a re-enactment of the Dunkirk evacuation. Mr Cameron's offer is one of negotiated reform of the UK's relationships with the EU, duly agreed with other members. Yet if this diplomatic ballet cannot be achieved, he means to lead us on the referendum dance regardless.

When that's done the Prime Minister will no doubt announce, in traditional style, that the people have spoken. One reality will be selected. It will be the reality that contains no consideration of unions and how they are supposed to cohere. For example, if the UK union is truly a partnership of four members and each is being asked to decide on relationships with the European Union, how are votes to be weighed?

Nicola Sturgeon has raised this point, of course. Her arguments invoke claims made during the debate over Scotland's referendum. Does a partnership of equals resemble the board of a devolved UK plc, or is that fiction swept aside when Mr Cameron's party picks up 36.9 per cent of the vote and 50.8 per cent of the seats in a first-past-the-post Westminster election? The EU referendum isn't small beer. Which version of political reality applies?

For long enough a favourite trope of (British) Unionism has rested on the claim that Scottish voters and their English counterparts are not so different in their outlook and attitudes. Actual votes, the sort that went overwhelmingly to Ms Sturgeon's party in May, are treated as a technicality. Where Europe is concerned, indeed, a co-director of the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey in March described Scots as just "a little bit more in favour of the EU". The difference was not "dramatic".

Truly? Here we are, soon to be confronted with the choice of an in-or-out vote, with the Government of Scotland and 56 of 59 MPs arguing that partnership carries shareholders' rights. The extent of "a little bit", like the myth that Scots are not truly different, is worth considering. Given Mr Cameron's wilful vagueness over what the EU referendum could involve, it might be worth urgent consideration.

Last September, the Prime Minister and all the other Better Together politicians decided that a 10.6 per cent difference between Yes and No in the independence referendum was decisive. It was certainly clear. In the last British Social Attitudes release, the number in England and Wales who thought the UK should prepare to leave the EU stood at 25.4 per cent. In answer to the same question, the Scottish figure was 16.5 per cent. Also clear?

Is a difference of 8.9 per cent slight and liable to prove that Scots are just "a little bit" different from people in the south? Or is that the kind of finding you might hail as decisive in a referendum, whether on independence or on Europe?

The attitudes surveys are littered with such results. They have been interpreted, with surpassing dishonesty, to show there is no Scottish difference worth discussing, in any matter of importance. It isn't, in any statistically significant sense, true. But if the question is continued EU membership, in or out, and Scotland's vaunted partnership rights, let's not kid ourselves.

Apart from anything else, Mr Cameron might have need of the 24.1 per cent of Scots who would just leave things as they are where the EU is concerned. He might even one day be grateful for the 11.9 per cent who believe either that the UK should be working towards an increase in EU powers, or a single European government. You never know. The attitudes survey has spoken.

It provides fun with numbers. Elections, general or otherwise, have the same entertainment value. For example, the 16.5 per cent of Scots who would quit the EU is a figure coinciding exactly with the combined Tory-Ukip vote in Scotland in May. Spooky, eh? By no coincidence, Ukip gathered up 47,078 votes in Scotland at the General Election. Elsewhere in the UK, it won 3,834,051 votes. The Scots, you see, are just like their counterparts elsewhere.

The SNP's policy on Europe has altered a bit over the years. The same could be said, with added pantomime interludes, for the Conservatives and Labour. Last month, nevertheless, no one who took an interest could have been in any doubt about where Ms Sturgeon's party stood on Europe. The result, in one of the larger attitudes surveys, was 50 per cent of 2.9 million Scottish votes.

Almost overnight, those on the other side of the ledger discovered iniquities in first-past-the-post. Had it cared about electoral reform (or Scotland) Mr Cameron's party might have felt entitled to eight MPs in these parts. Then again, reform of that sort would have cost the Prime Minister 70 members of the Commons, his majority, and his assumed right to be make a dog's breakfast of European policy.

One union is poised to debate its dealings with another. Nothing wrong with that. It might help, though, if Mr Cameron made contact with at least one available reality before blundering on. The Scots have a view that is not his view. Ratification can mean different things to different people.