Scotland is still deeply divided as arguments over independence risks refuse to go away

Zhou Enlai is said to have quipped that 200 years was too short a time to judge the effect of the French Revolution. Twelve months certainly isn’t long enough to assess the legacy of the Scottish referendum.

It was certainly an extraordinary process. For two years, we talked about nothing but Scotland, and an unprecedented number of people eventually cast their vote, one way or another.

Extraordinary, sometimes energising, but also deeply divisive. Not just because people took opposing views. The experience of yes and no voters was quite different, as polling immediately afterwards showed. The overwhelming majority of yes voters felt free to express their views; three quarters of them thought the process had united the country. Half of no voters felt unable to speak out, and 9 out of 10 of them of thought the whole business left the country divided.

We talked about Scotland, but hardly engaged with each other. The relentless positivity of the yes campaign spoke primarily to the heart. Questions of economics or policy choice were airily dismissed as irrelevant, or establishment bluff. Better Together’s head was more firmly screwed on, but it's hard to make saying no, even no thanks, sound positive.

Had the vote gone the other way, Scotland would now be 6 months away from the SNP's target date for independence: a sobering thought. Rather too many of the risks of independence identified in the campaign have crystallised in the last 12 months, notably the collapsing price of oil. We’d be looking at austerity even George Osborne would run away from.

Some on the nationalist side have found it hard to take no for an answer. Given the commitment and enthusiasm they put into the campaign, maybe understandably. But no does mean no, and the referendum was a “once in a generation" event. Maybe circumstances, like UK EU membership, will change dramatically, but we'll cross that bridge if we ever come to it.

My nationalist friends–I do have some–tell me it’s their predictions that have come true: Scotland is now in a UK where a Tory government is cutting public services and removing benefits. But what's changed, and is changing further, is that the Scottish Parliament now has the power to do something about it.

2016 should be the year in which Scottish devolution grows up. This is a real challenge for all Scottish politicians: it's no longer their job is just to spend the money and complain it isn't enough. If the UK government wants to shrink the state to pay back the UK's debts it can. But if the Scottish government wants to take a different course, it's getting the tax powers–and soon the welfare powers– to do that. Soon 40 per cent of Scottish taxes will flow to Edinburgh, not London. Scotland will be able to run a more generous welfare system. But only provided Scots politicians have the will to persuade Scots to pay for it.

One year after deciding to stay in the UK, Scotland faces a different set of choices–not what country to belong to, but what sort of country it really wants to be. A much harder question. How will we answer that one?

+ Professor Jim Gallagher is an associate member of Nuffield College, Oxford and a former senior civil servant. He was an adviser to Better Together.

By Ewan Crawford

For me the vastly different nature of the two sides in the referendum campaign really hit home on the day of a joyous event in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile when independence supporters born elsewhere in Europe, but now living in Scotland, held up banners proclaiming “Yes” in their native languages.

It was one of those days when the crowds were just so much bigger, happier and hopeful than we could ever have expected.

Returning to the office after staffing the First Minister, I found my colleagues had some news: David Cameron had cancelled Prime Minister’s Questions. Along with Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, he was on his way north to persuade people in Scotland of the impending doom that would befall us should we vote Yes.

There seemed something fitting about the two events – a genuine grassroots surge (which, to be honest, had taken many of us by surprise) against the Westminster establishment.

The cancelling of PMQs was a relatively small part of a shock and awe campaign that became ferocious in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Commuting from Glasgow to Edinburgh I sometimes listened to music to escape the endless warnings about “separation” from Labour, the Tories, LibDems, Westminster committees, the CBI, Scottish Financial Enterprise, the European Commission president, and everyone it seemed from Barack Obama to Archie Macpherson.

Given this onslaught there must have been some frustration among Better Together that the SNP and the wider Yes campaign were not facing the planned drubbing.

A huge part of the resilience of Yes came from the unprecedented engagement and activism of thousands of people. I supposed that’s why, after years of complaints about political apathy, this new movement had to be derided so strongly.

The groundswell of activism was complemented by the work the Scottish Government, which I am immensely proud to have been involved with.

Ultimately of course none of this was enough. Looking back, and forward, it is essential that those of us who favour independence seek to understand why others said No.

Scotland will only become independent when many more people, across all ages, feel included in that great sense of mission and possibility that characterised Yes campaigners.

In truth, most of the arguments deployed by Better Together have gone forever. With the most divisive Westminster government in living memory in power, it will be impossible to resurrect Gordon Brown-style arguments about “pooling and sharing” resources. With Jeremy Corbyn lukewarm about the European Union and many Tories wanting to leave, saying an independent Scotland’s place in the EU would be in jeopardy now just looks daft.

That means No campaigners will rely even more heavily on stoking fears about the economic consequences of independence: regardless of what currency policy is proposed.

For independence supporters the counter is to make the sense of economic opportunity more powerful, and widely shared, than the scare. When that is achieved I have no doubt any subsequent Yes campaign will win and win well.

+ Ewan Crawford is a lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland and a former Scottish Government adviser who worked closely with Yes Scotland