TALK about starting the day with a shudder. Was it all those headlines warning of the Scottish Government’s intention to tax the middle classes till the pips squeak? The latest sabre rattles on North Korea? Jacob Rees-Mogg (surely to be unmasked any day now as a Channel 4 prankster), topping a Conservative poll to be the party’s next leader? No, it was Lord George Robertson.

Well, of course it was.

Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, to give him his Sunday name, was musing on what would have happened had Scotland become independent. Good Lord, said the good lord, the effect would have been “cataclysmic”, with all nuclear power in the West left in the hands of Donald Trump “and perhaps the French”. In consequence, solidarity from Berlin to Boise, Idaho would have shattered, strengthening terrorists everywhere.

This is not the first time Lord Robertson has issued this warning. He first did so in 2014, just before Scotland went to the polls on independence. It was not the former Nato general secretary’s prediction that caused a shiver. His prophecy was ludicrous then and it is ridiculous now (can anyone see the West falling apart because missiles move down the road?). No, it was the reason Lord Robertson was singing his auld song again: he was being interviewed by ITV Border to mark the 20th anniversary this month of Scotland voting for devolution.

Yes, it has started. No sooner had Nicola Sturgeon reduced her party’s core aim of independence to a mere aside in her Programme for Government, than remembrance of constitutional things past had begun. Someone clearly did not get the memo spelling out that we are now living in a brave new post-independence referendum Scotland, where the only things on the menu are bread and butter issues. All that talk of constitutional change and another independence referendum? Resting. On the back burner. Nothing to see here folks, now move on.

But as the marking of the devolution anniversary shows, some are not quite ready to say cheerio to all that just yet. In East Germany they called this phenomenon Ostalgie, a nostalgia for the old ways. In Scotland we might term it Indygie. As a portmanteau it needs work, sounding more like a new indigestion tablet than a way to sum up the turning of political tides, but there is time.

All of this does raise a fascinating question, though. Independence as an idea can live without Scotland, but can Scotland live without the independence debate? Ambitious academics might like to get a head start by launching a study into the effects on a populace of living in constitutional turmoil over a long period. In her speech on Tuesday, the First Minister spoke of the “baby box generation” of new Scots growing up under a Scottish Parliament. But what of the indyref generation, those who have come of age in successive eras of essentially binary politics? For them, the constitutional question has dominated debate, dividing voters into opposing camps: yes, no, or that closely fought over constituency, the mebbes ayes, mebbes naws. As with Brexit now, every issue has been seen through the prism of independence. The economy, education, health, defence, the environment: was the answer independence or not?

Similarly, like rain on a rock, the drip, drip, drip of constitutional politics shaped Scotland’s main political parties into what they are today. The sharp, Thatcherite edges of the Scottish Conservatives were blunted, leaving behind a monolith with one popular policy: no to another referendum. Scottish Labour was reduced to slipping and sliding all over the place on whether to back independence. The LibDems, muddled to the last, were left arguing that a vote to leave the European Union is bad and should be challenged, but a vote to stay in the Union is good and must be respected.

The constitutional question has also had a profound effect on Scottish society. The yes-no matter caused splits within families and among friends and colleagues, divisions that in some cases have yet to heal. Now, as the question of another referendum moves into the background, all those memories of things said are meant to be put away. Outside of the usual argy-bargy on social media, one has faith they will be, but it will not happen just like that.

What was striking about Ms Sturgeon’s programme was not so much the policies, many of which had the whiff of a microwave reheat about them, but the debates they look set to stir, particularly on tax and spending. Caught up for so long with constitutional questions, do we still have it in our muscle memory to give and take intellectually on other matters? Of course we do. Some of us can still recall the days when raising taxes was not the taboo it is today, when a politician really did announce his intention to squeeze certain sectors till the pips squeaked (in Denis Healey’s case it was property speculators and not, as is oft misquoted, the rich).

The arguments on such bread and butter issues have not changed much, but it has been a long time since they were chewed over.

It is not just voters who will have to limber up again. Whither the Scottish Conservatives now that the constitutional fox has moved to a new neighbourhood down south? Away from the heat of a referendum, and with taxation moving front and centre, will Scottish Labour finally recognise how much unites rather than divides it from the SNP? The LibDems, as ever, will trim their sail according to the wind.

Before we become too excited about our brave new post-indy ref world, there is another way of looking at things. Despite the last few years of tornado politics, seismic change happens slowly. What is Trump, after all, but a slow-burn reaction to the Clinton years of excess and cronyism; or the Brexit vote just more fallout from the toppling of Mrs Thatcher? Scottish politics might have entered a new era, or this could merely be a pause for breath on the way to wherever Brexit is taking us. Scottish independence, that great, all-conquering, ever-present, question of our lives. We may not have done with you yet.