Alan Taylor on the anniversary of the referendum and its aftermath for No and Yes voters

I have been thinking a lot lately of Wilson, or Baron Wilson of Rievaulx as he chose to style himself when he was elevated to the Lords. What would he make of what has happened over the past 12 months? If indeed a week is a long time in politics, a year must be an eternity. Who could have predicted the SNP tsunami after it lost the independence vote last September? And who would ever have thought that a likely Labour leader would be Jeremy Corbyn, a maverick MP who has spent much of his 30-plus years career at Westminster opposing the policies of the party of which he insists he is such a stout supporter? Even the Brahmin Seer couldn’t have seen that coming.

It was just 12 months ago that at five o’clock on a rainy morning I stood at a bus stop in Princes Street waiting to be conveyed home after spending hours at a count in a soulless conference centre on the western outskirts of Edinburgh. As the 44 trundled through the empty streets it picked up a few passengers, most of whom looked deflated and morose. All were Yes supporters and their dream of an independent Scotland was shattered, at least for the moment. The posters in windows – NHYES, YES PLEASE, VEGGIES FOR YES – which had brought a smile to so many commuters throughout the campaign now seemed pitiful, an unwelcome reminder of what might have been. No one spoke. No one needed to. Dawn broke.

Eventually, I got a couple of hours sleep and as soon as I got up the phone began to ring. A journalist from Hong Kong wanted to know what the atmosphere on the streets was like, what the reaction of people was, what might be the consequences of a No vote. Might Salmond resign? Would this put an end to the clamour for independence? Since I had not spoken to anyone I was unable to enlighten to him. A London radio station put me on hold and I waited like a plane in the queue to land at Heathrow before I could throw in my tuppenceworth. Ahead of me was Boris Johnson, hyperventilating as ever like a toddler about to be introduced to Santa Claus. Asked what he wanted now to happen he said he would be arguing for “a Barnett Formula for the people of Barnet”. The host then made a joke about Johnson’s own blond barnet which went down like Des O’Connor at the Glasgow Empire. When, finally, I was allowed to say something my comments were so intemperate the producer suddenly decided it was an appropriate moment to wheel in the weatherman.

Throughout 2014 I had travelled the length and breadth of this contumacious country. The idea was to take the national temperature, to gauge how Scotland stood at this critical point in its history. How was the patient faring? Was it in rude health or feeling liverish? What were the chances of a full recovery? Did anyone have a cure for its ills? I was covering well-trod turf. Throughout the centuries countless commentators – Scots and non-Scots – have attempted to anatomize this northern heath and the natives who inhabit it. How deeply embedded in our collected psyche, for instance, is Samuel Johnson’s definition of ‘oats’: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” To that remark may well be traced the resentment many Scots feel today when lesser sages bang on about about the difficulty of distinguishing between a Scotsman and a ray of sunshine.

The particular shadow I was haphazardly following belonged to the Orcadian poet Edwin Muir who in 1934 motored round the country. It was a time of deprivation of the kind that makes today’s equivalent seem barely worthy of report. Muir was discomfited by the state of the towns and the conditions in which many people were living. Then as now poverty was at the root of numberless evils. In Glasgow, he counted many unemployed men standing on street corners, most of whom, he surmised, were “honest and decent” but who had had the energy drained out of them by purposelessness and inactivity. “Their life,” concluded Muir, “now is a long dreary Sunday; their hands have grown useless; their skills have dropped from them; their days have turned into an unending, inconclusive dream”.

Eight decades on, much of what Muir had to say continues to resonate but much, too, has changed. Scotland of 2015 would be largely unrecognisable to someone familiar with it in 1935 and it’s important to acknowledge this. Since then we have come a long way and there has been, by and large, much to cheer about. On average, standards and conditions have risen and we are a healthier lot, living longer and better, though we often do our damnedest to defy it. We drink, eat and smoke too much and don’t take enough exercise. Muir, I think, would find much yet to dismay him. He would not like our rampant consumerism and the boorishness that pollutes city centres, especially at weekends. The noise that is everywhere – from leaking iPods to blowhards on public transport sharing their banalities with all and sundry – would have him reaching for ear plugs. He would also find the number of cars clogging up roads and emitting noxious fumes a matter of astonishment. In his day, he could travel for miles without seeing another vehicle. Now, he’d be lucky to find space to park in a remote glen. Nor, I believe, would he be impressed by the overall standard of education and of the lack of awareness of indigenous culture. I often wonder how many of us could name a contemporary poet or painter or composer.

What Muir would make of the political scene is harder to assess, and no wonder. On the afternoon of September 19, I was having coffee with a friend from London in the National Library of Scotland when I got a call telling me that Alex Salmond had resigned as SNP leader. It was hardly a surprise. It was inevitable that he would go sooner rather than later. But the alacrity with which he headed for the exit demonstrated the boldness of his decision-making that has been his hallmark. It’s what distinguishes him from Gordon Brown.

Had things been different, Salmond and Brown could have been brothers-in-arms. Four years separates them – Brown was born in 1951, Salmond in 1955 – and their backgrounds and education – presbyterian, state-school educated, left-leaning, upper working class – are remarkably similar. But their personalities could not be more contrasting. Where Brown dithers, Salmond gambles. One is cautious and conservative; the other is impetuous and wired to take risks. Had Brown been in Salmond’s shoes, for example, he would never have bet his and his country’s future on a referendum the success of which was, let’s be honest, unlikely. But that’s typical of Salmond. He believes that eventually everyone will come round to his way of thinking, seduced by the charm that many people doubt exists and persuaded by the power of his rhetoric. It was no surprise, therefore, that after a period of reflection he chose to stand again for Westminster and in a constituency held by the Liberal Democrats with a considerable majority. Meanwhile, Brown, having done his bit with "The Vow" – credited by some with “saving the Union”, retreated to North Queensferry to chew his nails, watch the new bridge emerge over the Firth of Forth and ponder how, having won one big battle, mere months later Labour managed to lose another at the general election that could threaten its very existence.

It was another politician, Harold Macmillan, who, when asked what he most feared, replied: “Events, dear boy, events.” How otherwise to explain the present situation in which the leaders of three of Scotland’s political parties are women? In this most patriarchal of societies that represents a revolutionary volte face. It is not so long ago that women were excluded from many areas of Scottish life or were relegated to bit parts. That is no longer the case. Historians will record the success or otherwise of Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure as First Minister. For the moment though she has broken the male mould and inspired other, younger women to follow suit. That two of her main rivals – Labour’s Kezia Dugdale and the Tories’ Ruth Davidson – are of the same gender would have seemed to someone of Muir’s generation unconscionable. Be that as it may, it is women such as these three and Mhairi Black – the youngest MP to be elected to the House of Commons since the 1832 Reform Act –who will determine Scotland’s immediate future. We shall see to what extent their approach will differs from that of the men who preceded them.

At the moment the SNP is in a position that makes a mockery not only of pollsters but of history. No one eight months ago, let alone 80 years ago, could have imagined that it would hold 56 out of Scotland’s 59 parliamentary seats. When on the eve of the May general election a friend told me he had bet on them winning a clean sweep I told him he should strap himself into a strait jacket. How near he came to confounding the odds. One LibDem, former Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, clung on perhaps illegitimately to Orkney and Shetland, while at the opposite end of the country, David Mundell held Dumfries and Galloway by fewer than 800 votes. Meanwhile, the last Labour MP, Ian Murray, is to be found in Edinburgh, in Morningside, not what one would normally describe as a socialist heartland.

This is all indicative of the rate at which the political landscape is changing. The independence referendum may have been won by those who chose to say “No” but the aftermath has been a triumph for those who refuse to accept that as decisive. Travelling around today my perception is that many people find this an affront to democracy. There is a sense of bewilderment, disillusionment and anger among many No voters, many of whom feel betrayed by a system that was supposed to draw a line under the constitutional question for a generation. Their fears, their worries, their uncertainty demonstrates just how divisive the referendum was and continues to be. A few people I have spoken to fear for their businesses and the value of their properties if there is to be another referendum. For them, uncertainty equals financial instability. We’ve been there, done that, they say, it’s time to move on, time to roll up sleeves and get to work. Government should stop campaigning and concentrate on governing. Some, such as the entrepreneur, Michelle Mone, whom I encountered earlier this summer in the Borders, say they no longer want to live here and are determined to move. That saddens me, as it should everyone who has the country’s best interests at heart. For who would want to live in a place in which fellow Scots feel so excluded and discomfited that they believe they have no alternative but to seek their fortunes elsewhere?