DAVID Cameron has admitted that if there had been a Yes vote in the referendum, he would have wanted to have stood down but would have soldiered on out of a sense of duty.

Ahead of the poll, when the matter of his resignation was raised the Prime Minister repeatedly made clear the issue did not arise and that the referendum was not about his future but that of Scotland and the UK. Many argued, however, losing the Union would have made his position untenable.

But when asked in a newspaper interview about the possibility of him standing down if Scots had voted for independence, he admitted: "I thought about it a lot. Emotionally I would have been very winded and wounded. I thought in many ways that is what I would want to do."

Mr Cameron even contemplated the speech he would have had to have made from the steps of No 10 in the event of a Yes vote.

"Obviously, I thought what I would have to say if there was a Yes vote. I would have felt it as a huge blow. I'm very glad I didn't have to say it."

But the PM stressed that on reflection he would have wanted to remain in post even if the result had gone the other way.

"I just don't think(resigning would have been) the right thing to do. The job of the United Kingdom Prime Minister, whatever the outcome, would be to knuckle down and get on with the job. It would not have been doing your duty."

The PM, who had previously revealed he had only seen highlights of one of the Salmond/Darling head-to-head TV debates and failed to see the other, said he stayed up all night to watch the referendum results on which his own future might have depended.

"I did not sleep," he declared. "I went to bed and tried to sleep but I came down to the press office about three o'clock as the results came in. My children got up; they sensed how worried I was by it. They sat on my knee as the results came in."

Mr Cameron is due to give his keynote speech to the Conservative conference on Wednesday when he is expected to mention the referendum battle and the consequent ones now on-going about what level of extra powers to devolve to Holyrood and how to bring in English Votes for English Laws.