TOMORROW I’ll get a big part of my identity stripped away. Me and about 16 million other people.

It’s Brexit Day in a few hours. The majority has spoken, and while I’ll always feel European, there’s no point kidding myself – as long as I’m a UK citizen, I’m really not a ‘European’ any long-er, am I? At least, I’m certainly not a European citizen any more, that’s for sure.

And a route back to Europe through Scottish independence is still a long way away and a hard hill to climb. It may never happen, so I have to be honest and realistic and accept that, certainly for now, my European identity has been taken from me.

I was two when the UK joined the EEC. I grew up a European. European has always been my primary identity. Losing that identity is much crueller than I thought it would be.

To me Europe represented an expression of our better selves. The European Union was about peace, progress, internationalism, modernity, unity. I felt at home in a place which espoused these ideas. Sure, it’s flawed – the EU should be for ordinary people not big business – but what government isn’t flawed, and I believed problems could be fixed by being part of the club and changing things from the inside.

Emotionally and intellectually, losing this identity is going to be hard for folk like me. What makes it worse is that tomorrow many people will be gloating and laughing at our upset. We’ll be told to dry our Remoaner tears, that we’re snowflakey libtards, to get over ourselves because we lost and should just suck it up. There will be worse words thrown as well – traitor, for one. Some will be told: if you don’t like it, just leave.

There’s something almost sociopathic about sneering at a defeated opponent. It’s like kicking someone in the head when you’ve already left them unconscious on the ground. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a pro-European tomorrow in England. The parties, the contempt, the triumphalism, the curdled nationalism, would be ugly to deal with. Here in Scotland, at least, the celebrations will be few and far between, so the day can pass without having to hear too much crowing at the expense of others.

But this unpleasant sense of loss that pro-Europeans are experiencing - this feeling that the bailiffs have come in and taken something very cherished away - has got me thinking about Scot-land and our own constitutional tug-of-war.

I’m a Yes voter. I’d like to see Scotland independent. But there’s no way I'd want No voters to feel the way I’ll feel tomorrow, if and when Scotland ever goes independent.

I don’t want ordinary decent people who just happen to differ with me politically to be made to feel the same sense of loss, of being sidelined and unimportant, of marginalisation in their own country. The same sense of defeat, of being conquered.

Nor would I want to see any gloating and sneering from the nastier voices in the Yes movement. It would shame me to be part of the same ‘team’ if we won and then rubbed the losers’ noses in the dirt. How cheapened would be that victory?

So how do I square that circle? Is it possible to have constitutional change - the most divisive of all political issues - without humiliating and vanquishing your opponents? I say this: it has to be possible for the good of the country.

If I’ll feel stripped of my European identity, how will a Unionist voter feel after independence? They’ll feel stripped of their British identity. They’ll feel robbed, hurt, not listened to, not cared about. They’ll feel beaten and alienated.

A functioning democracy cannot afford to have nearly half its population in a state of hurt opposition. Everyone needs to be able to feel part of society.

Of course, we’re talking about empathy here. If I know it hurts to lose part of my identity, then I’d have to be plain cruel not to care how others feel if they lose part of their identity.

We don’t talk enough about style and tone when it comes to politics - we talk about ideas, about power. But it may be style and tone that let us find a humane path through our constitutional divide. There’s been a lot of chatter about the Yes movement ‘wooing’ No voters, of being gently persuasive to Unionists - I’ve seen damn little of that in practice.

Unionists need to know that even if they lose a future referendum that the Yes movement isn’t against them as people, that Scotland belongs as much to them as it does to an independence supporter. At the moment, that’s not being said. No voters fear they’ll ‘lose’ their country, have it taken from them.

Self-evidently, all this is true in reverse, but I must worry about the conduct and strategy of my own ‘side’.

There are bitter, unpleasant people - trolls, extremists - among both camps. I wish to God someone would gag them and lock them in a cupboard until we finally settle the future of Scotland.

Politicians won’t help us make the debate better, or more decent. The SNP will grind grievance and alienate No voters, the Tories will deny democracy and infuriate Yes voters. It really boils down to us trying to be better people when it comes to our political actions - certainly better than the bunch we put in parliament and pay handsome salaries.

We’ve all got friends and family who differ with us politically. We don’t gloat or sneer at them over politics. We disagree with them, and I’m sure we all tell them so in no uncertain terms, but we care about them and don’t want to put the boot into them. Why do to a stranger what you wouldn’t do to a friend or relative?

We need to stop dehumanising people we disagree with politically. This isn’t a battle between democracy and tyranny – on either side – it’s a debate about the constitutional future of Scotland. It’s important, but it’s not a matter of life and death. No-one is evil, no-one a saint. It’s a political discussion and should be treated as such – no more, no less. That way, as few people as possible get hurt.

Neil Mackay is Scotland’s Columnist of the Year