For a campaign inspired in many cases by creative ideas, Carol Ann Duffy's September 2014 captured perfectly the outcome of the Referendum result - particularly, in a nod perhaps to her Glasgow antecedents, her prescient words of how "the thistle jags our hearts, take these roses from our bloodied hands".

The Referendum result demonstrated the many Scotlands at play - the economic prosperity of areas of relative affluence contrasted sharply with some of the communities of persistent economic disadvantage that have sought to express their desire for change via a Yes vote.

In Glasgow it was a mother of all battles and, despite the resources thrown at the city by the Yes campaign, the Scottish Labour Party placed itself on the line not to defend the British establishment, as some of Labour's more hyperbolic opponents claimed, but to defend the values of solidarity and the noble idea that we are a better nation when we share resources and demonstrate how the great institutions of our country were shaped and moulded by the democratic socialist values that inspired Scottish Labour's creation.

In a remarkable turnout across Scotland, nearly all of Jock Tamson's bairns who were eligible to vote did so and - to quote our First Minister - "the Sovereign will of the people of Scotland" has determined they wish to stay in the Union but with a powerful message to use existing and new powers to effect real social change and transformation.

Yet even a week after the historic result, it feels as if there are impending battles still to come. Without the intervention of Gordon Brown, perhaps the pressure on the Labour vote would have been much greater. Gordon's almost Shakespearian comeback to the political stage electrified and galvanised the cause of a No vote and his intervention swept aside previously anaemic Labour contributions.

In Glasgow, the ding-dong battles on some doorsteps reflected the passionate and often disputatious nature of the citizens of Scotland's largest city but it also conveyed a sense both governments had failed to design policies that could help the city prosper. The UK welfare reform agenda is a dagger to Glasgow's heart and the absence of any redistributionist policies from Holyrood contradicts the rhetoric of the White Paper on tackling inequality.

To address the discontent, why not use the £370 million-plus identified for corporation tax cuts to invest every year in social housing, which would transform many of our blighted communities in the areas crying out for change.

The challenge for Labour is not to walk away from the votes for Yes in Scotland's largest city but to redouble our efforts and demonstrate that the solutions lie neither in the failed economics of the Tories or the fantasy economics of the White Paper.

The challenge for our outgoing First Minister is to resist his Manichean propensity of being a statesman one moment and operating outside the political process the next to capitalise on what he has called "the guardians of progress who will refuse meekly to go back into the political shadow".

His call to "hold Westminster's feet to the fire" reveals more his desire to be a Tartan Torquemada and his likely successor, Nicola Sturgeon, should nip such hyperbole in the bud.

The continuity of SNP leadership is in sharp contrast to half a Scotland team of Scottish Labour leaders since 1999. But the lesson of the last week of the campaign is that when the message was communicated with passion and energy, there was a hunger by Labour voters to respond.

Until Labour combines its rich heritage of progressive and radical reform with a sense of what it really wants for Scotland and rediscovers its authentic voice free from a stale managerialism, it will continue to have the mother of all battles for the soul of a progressive and fairer Scotland.