Exactly a week ago I was recovering from a sleepless night and so was the rest of Scotland.
I had been in the National Count Centre in Ingliston Tweeting out the results as I got them from Mary Pitcaithly over the PA into the Lowland Hall where the hacks were corralled.
When I filed this piece to Slugger O’Toole as NO finally crossed the finishing line, but I believed that the 45% YES vote was significant.
I still do.
At the start of my Scottish sojourn I had asked Robin McAlpine of the Commonweal and Mike Small of Bella Caledonia to consider the following scenario:
No wins the referendum, but not a crushing victory and the YES side get 45% of the vote.
I then asked them to sketch out what they would do in that situation the day after the Union had been saved.
Of course it probably wasn’t the best time to ask them this stuff. They were in the final furlong of the ‘IndyRef’ campaign and they believed that they would win, but privately I didn’t.
This week I touched base with the two of them again and reminded them of those conversations at the end of August.
During the campaign I had asked them in the event of my scenario unfolding would the Yes Scotland campaign become a stable movement ready for a long political haul.
They both answered in the affirmative and I think that we are now seeing the proof of that.
SNP membership has soared off the graph and the Scottish Green Party will have to hire bigger venues for their meetings in future.
I am sure the Scottish Socialist party will also feel the ‘IndyRef’ wave.
Despite losing the Independence Referendum for me the Yes Scotland campaign, in all of its grassroots diversity achieved something real, tangible and lasting.
A hashtag on Twitter #the45 currently seems to be very popular with the YES Generation.
These folk have looked into the duplicitous eyes of the British Establishment and they now know what they’re dealing with.
A week ago today they knew in their despair that the lies and the threats had worked on enough of the 55% to swing the vote.
What they did not know was that the British head of state was “purring down the line” to Prime Minister David Cameron.
As the promises made by the Westminster tribe in the last few days of the IndyRef campaign unravel then the chaps on the Thames will slowly realise that their Caledonian troubles are not at an end.
I reckon that if some smart folk in Scotland were to stage a conference of people who voted NO, but now regret their decision then they would have to hire a very large hall indeed.
If anyone was considering this then I would suggest that they aim to have this event on or around Saint Andrew’s day.
It would be the day for NO voters to safely come out and state that they felt that they had been duped by the Better Together campaign.
I have no doubt that many people are now-even a week on- regretting that the lies and the fear mongering got to them in the voting booth.
The core issue is that Scotland is different and it is a difference that the ruling tribe on the Thames simply does not get.
There is now a visceral hatred-not a word I would deploy without some reflection-of the People’s Party in many areas of the Scotland where previously the Labour vote had been weighed rather than counted.
The British establishment, having won the Referendum wants everyone in Scotland ‘to move on’.
Little chance of that.
There has been a tidal wave of energy unleashed by the Yes Scotland campaign and that has not gone away you know.
Then there is the very laudable task of taking out the People’s Party for their sterling role in defending the Mother country…
A Yes Alliance slate of candidates in seats currently held by unionist MPs would be A.Very.Good.Idea.
Any Labour MP sitting in a Glasgow constituency is now on the electoral equivalent of Death Row.
Jim McGovern in Dundee West might want to put his political affairs in order.
Only split opposition votes will allow some of these ‘Red Tories’ to hang onto their generous expenses.
An organised unified campaign by the pro-Yes parties and agreed candidates in targeted constituencies could see the Labour Tories being sent homewards to think again.
It is the least they deserve.
Of course Labour MSPs could well suffer a similar electoral fate in 2016 at the Holyrood elections.
The British establishment, especially the local representatives in the Labour Party do not want energised, engaged people.
They want a defeated docile biddable population.
This week in Manchester the British Labour Party sang the ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Jerusalem’ at the end of their annual conference.
I am sure the author of the first song Jim Connell, a Fenian from County Meath, would have serious issues with his lyrics being used as a marketing scam by a right wing outfit that hates the poor.
Of course the second song may well suit the People’s Party perfectly in the years to come.
It might only now be “in England’s green & pleasant Land” that Labour MPs can sleep soundly as they cuddle their expenses.
