Only now is SNP facing the reality of a decade of profligacy - John McLellan

Then deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon watches a steel ‘Yes’ sign being made at Steel Engineering in Renfrew ahead of the independence referendum in 2014

He had already taken down the campaign posters and, he said, it was over and time to move on. But as we know it was far from over, and what followed over the next decade was an intensification of the increasingly bitter divisions the campaign had stoked.

Frank did indeed try to put the result behind him and as Lord Provost did his even-handed best to maintain good relations on all sides, but nationally and locally the political atmosphere only grew more poisonous, relieved only by Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation last year.

Opinions are still divided along Yes-No lines about the nature of the 2014 campaign, with the Yes side claiming it was a “civic and joyous” expression of democracy, probably because they got closer than they could have imagined when the Edinburgh Agreement was signed two years earlier.

On the No side, certainly from Conservatives close to the campaign who watched with increasing alarm as Labour-controlled Better Together stumbled along with the same ineptitude which subsequently led to electoral catastrophe, the feeling was of frustration, then massive relief.

Most galling was the myth of The Vow, the supposedly last-minute promise of extra powers for the Scottish Parliament, with Gordon Brown and then-Daily Record editor Murray Foote ─ now SNP chief executive ─ claiming credit for a process the Conservative Party had already put in train. I know because I helped set it up in 2013.

It has taken a lot longer than expected, but only now is the impact of more responsibility beginning to take effect, with the SNP facing the reality of its profligacy and knowing it can’t simply tax its way out of trouble.

Shot of the basket-case Greens, the penny has dropped about the need for economic growth, just as a Fraser of Allander Institute survey reports over a third of the 800 participating businesses have experienced a fair or significant impact from higher income tax. A further 29 per cent experienced “a little” impact, which means the hike has affected just under two-thirds of Scottish businesses.

With a stagnant economy, years of declining standards, and vicious identity politics promoted by the party which promised to govern for the whole of Scotland, the mayhem after a Yes victory doesn’t bear thinking about.

And having learnt nothing from the General Election trouncing, SNP figures, most notably the divisive – which she admitted – Nicola Sturgeon and First Minister John Swinney are using the anniversary and another inconclusive opinion poll to keep the fires of division burning. And then there is jowly, growly Alex Salmond, utterly discredited and reduced to speaking to smaller crowds than a Sunday morning pub football match, fanning the flames of division within the movement itself.

Devoid of the ability to manage services or public finances efficiently, most of the last decade has been spent rubbing the noses of the silent majority who voted No into the dirt of an even more divisive agenda, alienating sensible nationalists in the process, like Frank Ross, who quit in 2022 after one snub to his constituents too many.

As the day the sun rose with the threat of chaos averted, September 19 is the anniversary for Unionists to remember.