Democracy is often held up as the purist, most fair form of government.

It is also hailed as giving "the people" the most effective voice and Scottish football, of all things, might just be in the process of proving it.

The Scottish game is in ferment – and the people are getting their way. The issue of a "newco Rangers" being allowed back into the Scottish Premier League next season has been the most glaring example yet of the game's governors and power-brokers being brought to heel by the man in the street wearing his football scarf.

It can now no longer be doubted that, had the chairmen of the SPL been given their heads without any hollering from the sidelines, the new Rangers would have secured a favourable vote next week for re-entry to the SPL.

Their reasoning for so doing was simple: despite the many wrongs perpetrated by the soon-to-be-liquidated Rangers, the SPL needs the Ibrox club's box office. The SPL chairmen's general view was this: our game is already impoverished enough without taking away a 35% cut of our customer base.

Even Celtic and Peter Lawwell were probably this way inclined. The Celtic support would be filled with revulsion at the very idea of their club in any way accommodating Rangers, but the likelihood is, this would not be Lawwell's straightforward view. The Celtic CEO knows how important the presence of Rangers is to his club.

Well, your average Scottish football fan has put the kybosh up all of this. As recent days and weeks have gone by, there has been a swelling contempt among fans of all clubs for what they viewed as a blind-eye approach to Rangers' sins in favour of a swift SPL return for the club and its money-generating hordes.

In particular, fans of Dundee United, Aberdeen, Celtic, St Johnstone and Kilmarnock have expressed their utter disgust at the idea of accommodating a newco Rangers. And with their disgust they issued a dire threat – they wouldn't be returning to their clubs with their wallets open unless the clubs expressed an unequivocal "no" to a newco Rangers in the SPL.

The SPL chairmen have duly capitulated. A month ago the proposed SPL vote, due to take place on Wednesday, had a decent chance of saying "yes" to Rangers. Now there is no chance of that. SPL club chairmen up and down the country have been brow-beaten by their own supporters. A voracious, voluble, impassioned type of democracy has won the day.

I witnessed this overflow of feeling in the Grand Hall in Kilmarnock last Thursday night. Michael Johnson, a Kilmarnock chairman who has been the most willing and prominent to hint at saying "yes" to a newco Rangers, received a verbal battering from a throng of fans.

One of them shouted to him: "Michael, I can tell you this. If you say 'yes' to Rangers at that vote, then I won't be back. I've been a season ticket holder for years at Rugby Park, but that will be it. I'm telling you. I'm warning you."

That moment perfectly summed up what has happened in recent times. There has been a storming of Scottish football's very own Bastille, and the punters have won the day. It is now inconceivable that Rangers will be in the SPL next season.

Now that overspill of fans' feeling is being heard in the lower regions, in the Scottish Football League. Right now we have a beer-and-sandwiches deal being cut between the SFA, the SPL and the SFL to have Rangers safely parachuted into the Irn-Bru First Division.

The reasoning among the game's power-brokers remains the same: they want Rangers punished, but (they hope) it will mean only one year of the SPL going without the Ibrox club's generation of wealth.

But now the First Division fans are having none of it, either. They are openly revolting against the idea, saying that any "newco" football club should start in Third Division. Democracy has already won once - can it do so again?

In the beginning, just about everyone in the media called this wrong. Most claimed that, come hell or high water, Rangers would be looked after in the SPL next season. I said it myself more than once – the SPL cannot allow Rangers to be temporarily deleted. We need the club.

But the people have spoken, and spoken loudly. Powerful boardroom figures have been cowed. Ironically, it was money that spoke first, and now it is money that is speaking last. The SPL needs the approval of its fans – and their money.