In today’s Europe nationalist movements grow stronger. The Scottish referendum is a result of the nationalistic party Scottish National Party’s aim of an independent Scotland. Using a descriptive idea analysis the essay aim to answer how the referendum arose, its main arguments and how national and state identity is affected in the arguments. The essay examines what Scottish and British identity is, how it can be observed in the two campaigns and what tinged the two campaigns. The result of the essay is that there are features in both of the two campaigns’ main arguments that are influenced by identity of either national or state character.