I suspect many of us who were persuaded to vote Yes at the referendum on Scottish independence two years ago were not exactly inconsolable at the outcome. There was mild disappointment a majority of our fellow Scots, including the 90-minute patriots who like to disparage the English at football and rugby, were still happy to let another country sign all the big cheques for us. It was also difficult to escape the slightly self-conscious feeling the citizens of other countries might be having a giggle at our expense. “Look at the Scots; they’re not slow at letting you know they’re not English but when they got the historic opportunity to be masters of their own destiny they lost their bottle.”

There was disappointment then and frustration and perhaps some anger so many had swallowed the empty rhetoric of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, each of whom, like several other Labour grandees, would soon be laying the groundwork for a future career in corporate finance. The anger, though, only really began to rise after the referendum. This was when it became clear the smiles of love and affection for Scotland coming from David Cameron and George Osborne and their acolytes had been replaced by smirks the morning after the referendum.

Yet, there was still a feeling amongst we who had lately become persuaded of the Yes case, that the status quo wasn’t exactly onerous. Not even in the most vivid imaginations of the most implacable nationalists could Scotland be considered to be under the yoke of the English. If some communities had suffered under Tory policies then so had many English communities. There was no army of occupation forcing truculent Scots to bend the knee to unpopular laws and a reviled monarchy. Indeed Queen Elizabeth was one of several British icons binding Scots and the rest of the UK together emotionally even if there had been a Yes vote on September 18, 2014.

Hadn’t Alex Salmond himself talked about the five unions Scots would still have with the rest of the UK following independence: currency, monarchy, society, Europe and defence? An elderly Yes voter from the east end of Glasgow put it eloquently during the referendum campaign, telling me: “The English don’t need to worry about us being independent; if they ever got invaded we’d still come down and help them drive oot the enemy.”

Two years on though, the landscape has changed dramatically and Scotland’s relationship with England has too. Look again at Mr Salmond’s five unions. Europe has gone while the common values that underpin our shared society have been loosened considerably. And while Scots may indeed always want to be there for them in times of peril an increasing number are resentful at doing so by spending £205 billion on weapons of mass destruction.

The clear and unequivocal victory for the No side at the referendum should have been an opportunity for Unionist leaders to build on the ties that bind us to our great southern neighbours. Instead they have set about destroying them. The charmless and vindictive tone of Mr Darling’s victory speech in the early hours of September 19 has characterised the Unionist attitude ever since. That this was immediately followed by a Tory leader telling the Scots “You’ve had your fun; it’s all about England now” ought to have given us a clue as to how the next couple of years would play out.

The post-referendum policy of The Scottish Conservatives and, lamentably, of several senior Labour figures, is to repeat three fictions ad nauseam: the referendum campaign was divisive and unpleasant and it was only ever to have been a once-in-a-generation event and that their fag-packet Vow had been delivered.

I travelled extensively throughout Scotland during the referendum campaign and witnessed a political awakening in our country. By the end of the campaign, tens of thousands of men and women had discovered their voices and found they were at least as informed and eloquent as those of the political classes. Indeed, several among the new batch of Scottish Conservative MSPs who have pretended to be outraged by the "divisiveness" of the referendum campaign should instead be thankful for it. They would never have got their places on the list if it hadn’t been for the fervour of the referendum.

The "once-in-a-generation" myth should have been put to bed by the SNP long before now. The Yes campaign was a massive popular movement comprising many loosely-aligned component parts. The leaders of one of them, the SNP, foolishly declared the referendum would occur only once in a generation. They uttered these words without consulting any of their own members or the many other Yes groups who were not a part of the SNP. Significant and far-reaching changes have been wrought in English society that has drastically altered its relationship to Scotland. These, along with the existence of an overall majority of Independence-supporting MSPs at Holyrood, provide a moral and a democratic mandate for a second independence referendum in the same generation.

The collapse from within of the Westminster Labour Party means Theresa May’s two-nation Toryism will run rampant in the UK for the foreseeable future. We have already observed the reality of this on the streets of England. During the course of the referendum on Britain’s continuing membership of the EU it seemed Scotland and England had never been further apart. On the streets of England I encountered unprecedented levels of fear and a resentment fanned by xenophobic demagogues like Nigel Farage and given further oxygen by Boris Johnson and Michael Gove; both of whom, as it transpired, had gambled with the UK’s future simply to mount a leadership coup in their party. As England closed in on itself and kicked out at immigrants Scotland embraced Europe – as it has done for 800 years – and welcomed refugees.

As the British parliament voted for remote-controlled air strikes on Syria, thus passing a death sentence on more innocent civilians, Scotland said No, just as we had said No to weapons of mass destruction being lowered into our waters using sums of money so vast they could re-invigorate an economy.

During the Scottish independence referendum Mr Brown had talked about the broad shoulders of the UK protecting the NHS, pensions and jobs. Two years later the brute shoulders of an English Conservative government are trying to dismantle the NHS; have permitted tax evasion to flourish on the grand scale; allowed a thousand Philip Greens to avoid their pension commitments; reneged on promises to build warships on the Clyde and failed to lift a finger to save what remains of our steel industry. Many of the senior Scottish Labour figures who acquiesced in this charade have since high-tailed it to well-paid jobs helping the super-rich protect their assets.

During the referendum on Scottish independence those who were inclined towards a Yes vote were dismissed as "separatists" by UK Tories and their friends in Scottish Labour. For the last two years it has seemed England has begun a process of separation by a thousand cuts from Scotland.