The biggest threat of Scotland seceding from the United Kingdom comes not from the SNP but from its appeasers and the complacency towards promoting British self-regard and what’s good about our country.

Today marks ten years since the Scottish independence referendum, conceded so meekly by David Cameron after Alex Salmond surprised even himself by winning an outright majority in the 2011 Holyrood elections. Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon had outsmarted Cameron and Liberal Democrat Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore, in negotiating the Edinburgh Agreement. 

The SNP were conceded the ability to determine the length of the campaign, an astonishing eighteen months; draft the wording of the question, so they might have the more hopeful and positive “Yes” proposition rather than the negativity of a “No” campaign; and, most worryingly at the time, were able to determine who enjoyed the franchise. The SNP used the local government electoral register so Scots who had moved abroad in the last fifteen years were not able to secure a postal vote, as would be their right in a general election, 16-year-olds and EU citizens living in Scotland were included, but Scots resident in the rest of the UK were not. It did not augur well and the result ended up far closer than it should have been.

The long campaign has ever since been romanticised as a time of open democratic joy when, in reality, it was a bitter, often intimidating appeal to Scottish patriotism that would ridicule and shame anyone who dared suggest Scots were as British as the next brother and sister. 

Particular disgust was hurled at Labour voters and politicians who had temporarily sided with the Tories, who in the contorted squinting of nationalist eyes are seen as “English” and therefore beyond the pale. It is a mythology that forgets the inconvenient fact that the Tories are Scotland’s oldest political party and were opposed to the Acts of Union brought before the original Scottish Parliament in 1707. Nationalists only appeal to the Scotch mist of history when it suits them.

In November 2013 Salmond and Sturgeon published, with the full force and resources of the Scottish government machine, a White Paper on how independence would look. Initially it met with a fanfare but on close examination it revealed more holes than Scotland’s golf courses. 

Typical of the times, and reflecting SNP campaigning, it was full of retail offerings delivering a sunlit uplands with milk and honey on issues such as childcare. It turned out the numbers presented for more childcare only made sense if there was a significant increase in immigration to create the children and provide the care. 

The paper also warned that because Cameron had announced he would hold an EU membership referendum if he won the next general election the only way for Scotland to “stay” in the EU was to vote for independence, despite EU Presidents and commissioners making it clear seceding from the UK meant seceding from the EU. 

Most damaging of all, it could not give necessary reassurance on the issue of currency. A separate currency would mean pensions being of less value but mortgages being more expensive. 

This white paper played into the hands of the Better Together campaign, which although presented as a cross-party coalition was essentially a Labour directed concern — focussing on “project fear”, as a leaked email had revealed. The problem self-evident in the No campaign output, speeches and articles was Scottish Labour politicians did not wish to talk-up the UK for that would require them to be positive about the country currently run by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition they wanted to remove. How could they continue to trash Britain under Cameron and Clegg while telling Scots to vote for it?

The reluctance to draw on a positive cultural, historical and communal appeal for being and remaining Scottish and British caused significant anger outside Better Together, leaving ordinary people no alternative but to do their own thing using social media and small-scale meetings. Had Labour been in power I’ve no doubt the campaign could and would have been different.

Inevitably there was a wobbly weekend in the week before the actual vote when one poll put the Yes campaign ahead and Cameron, Clegg and Miliband panicked in response, making “The Vow” to strengthen the powers of Holyrood. It was a needless concession that was later used to create yet another false grievance of a unionist double-cross, despite the promise being delivered.

Come the result it was more in relief than exultant joy that the No campaign won 55 to 45 per cent such had been the pummelling their downbeat campaign had taken. Fortunately the public saw through the SNP and the sense that the UK was indeed better together prevailed. Only four local authority areas, Glasgow, Dundee, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire voted Yes and on a turnout of 84.6 per cent the vote was 2 million to 1.6 million.

In the aftermath Salmond and Sturgeon immediately breached the Edinburgh Agreement, conceding the result but campaigning for the next opportunity from the next day. They resisted giving losers’ consent and both failed to attend the service of reconciliation arranged for the following Sunday in St Giles Cathedral. Salmond resigned and Sturgeon was anointed as his successor with a rock star tour of Scotland to audiences in their thousands.

For nearly nine years Sturgeon would then march her troops up the hill for a second referendum, teasing them about the next great battle, supported by the lazy assumption that it was only a matter of time for new generations to change the electorate in the nationalists’ favour.

The Brexit vote in 2016 was used as the new pretext, becoming the mother of all grievances despite the fact the SNP had spent more on a Holyrood by-election than it did on the EU referendum campaign. But the Scots did not respond to Sturgeon’s tantrums, having voted in favour of remaining in the EU they then showed their own collective losers’ consent by putting the UK ahead of having a second “indyref”.

Tellingly, when it came to the possibility of a soft Brexit the 35 SNP MPs abstained from Ken Clarke’s meaningful vote amendment that would have secured UK membership of the EU’s Customs Union. It lost by 6 votes.

Eventually the SNP lost their majority at Holyrood and their hubristic bubble burst spectacularly, falling from 48 MPs to only 9 in this year’s UK general election.

While for the last ten years the SNP has been in denial, stoking the flames of grievance to try and hold on to its support and keep the dream (and income) alive, the arrival of Alister Jack as Boris Johnson’s Scottish Secretary, and kept on by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, forced them to confront their unpalatable reality. 

The dream for now is dead, only complacency and appeasement will allow a way back

Jack’s muscular unionism, more subtle and nuanced than appreciated, with direct approaches to support Scottish local authorities over the head of SNP governments, coupled with a willingness to challenge the SNP Referendum Bill in the courts and strike down assent for the Gender Recognition Reform Act through the first ever Section 35 order, was in stark contrast to the post referendum appeasement of David Mundell, abetted by Ruth Davidson. 

The dream for now is dead, only complacency and appeasement will allow a way back. Now Labour is back in power they hopefully have learned the lessons from appeasing the nationalists.