LONDON: Scotland’s “No” to independence may have saved British Prime Minister David Cameron his job, but sweeping pledges of a constitutional shake-up could undermine his re-election drive and trigger more political instability.

Responding to what he called a “clear” rejection of Scottish independence on Friday, Cameron, who is up for re-election in May next year, promised to begin a process that would see Scotland granted further powers.

Know more: Scots reject independence in historic vote

He also said he wanted to see more powers devolved to Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as changes for England, starting with new voting arrangements in the British parliament.

Some, including in his own party, feel he promised too much.

“This result presents both opportunities and challenges for Cameron,” said Matthew Ashton, a politics lecturer at Nottingham Trent University.

“On the one hand he can make claim to the title of ‘the man who saved the union’. On the other, he’ll now have to deliver on his extraordinary ambitious promises of a new constitutional settlement.”

In the closing phase of the referendum campaign, Cameron and other party leaders made detailed promises to Scotland, about future funding and new tax and spending powers - a move some of his own lawmakers described as a “panicky” response to opinion polls which suggested the vote was too close to call.

It will be difficult for him to renege.

“The genie of a more devolved UK can’t be put back in the bottle,” a senior source in the Liberal Democrats, Cameron’s coalition partner, told Reuters after Cameron set out his plans. “The world has changed.” Cameron, who might have been cast aside by his party as the leader who lost Scotland had the vote gone the other way, said the constitutional changes should be agreed as a package by the main political parties before the next election, so that they could be implemented in the next 2015-2020 parliamentary term.

With Scotland being given more say over its own affairs, Cameron says lawmakers from England - which comprises 83 percent of the British population - should also have a way to decide issues for themselves.

That might mean setting up a system to keep Scottish members of the British parliament from voting on UK policies that do not apply to self-ruling Scots.

Such a system could be good for Cameron’s Conservatives, whose base is in England and who have been all but wiped out in Scotland. But it is tricky for the opposition Labour Party, which relies on Scottish support in Westminster and whose last UK prime minister, Gordon Brown, was a Scot.

Published in Dawn, September 20th , 2014