By no means. While Scotland has voted to remain part of the UK and Alex Salmond has resigned, the legacy is a campaign that became steadily more acrimonious. It wasn’t quite a brothers’ war, like the American colonies in 1776 (which was much more divisive than the later Civil War, as Owen Dudley Edwards has shown). And families didn’t quite fall apart at the dinner table over No versus Yes, as they might previously have done over X-Factor versus Strictly.
The actual result was as predicted, the margin perhaps larger than expected. Alex Salmond’s gloomy expression en route to the count in Edinburgh reflected a dawning awareness that the two mid-campaign polls that predicted a narrowing of the gap between “Yes” and “No” were either a statistical aberration or a surge that could not be sustained.
The former seems more likely, because the result suggests quite strongly that Scots still tend to vote along traditional lines, which are shaped by region, class, religion and aspiration.
But the hollow laughter is still echoing from Monday night when veteran political correspondent Ian McWhirter, who has form with BBC Scotland and the print media, said that the campaign had generally been “good-natured”. Where was he over the last few months? Since the egging of Labour MP Jim Murphy halfway through his 100 towns in 100 days stump, the argument moved from economic, to fiscal, to cultural, to Marquess of Queensberry. My home town, where the fistic art is usually practised at three in the morning, saw daylight punch-ups round the Yes/No booths and neighbours squaring off while queuing for rolls.
The old sectarian question in Scotland used to be “Are you a Catholic?” or more politely, “What school did you go to, son?”. The new sectarian question became “Were you for or against?”.
The level of misinformation, counterfactual argument and sheer, pointless invective was, pace McWhirter, pretty high. The media massaged pretty much every fresh angle, till acute became obtuse. When Professor Sir Tom Devine argued, and very cogently, in The Times that Catholics might, against all historical precedent, sway the vote for independence, his column was accompanied by a photograph of Alex Salmond having a drink with Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who played no visible part in the campaign and, correct me if I’m wrong, was a bit of an embarrassment.
Predictably, the campaign allowed all and any manner of ancient grievances to come to the surface. One doesn’t have to be Edward De Bono to understand that the real question wasn’t really “Yes” or “No” at all, but how very much Scotland is going to change, whichever way the referendum had gone.
Is this really is a decision taken and a matter closed “for a generation”, as David Cameron and Mr Salmond have both said, or will be a further vote recognising that up to 45 per cent of Scots want separation? The issue now will be whether that latter number can be built on, or whether it has peaked and is in retreat.
Again, the greater issue seems to be what effect the process and outcome have had on the United Kingdom as a whole, or as a set of competing parts. Far from a resolution yesterday, perhaps the real fisticuffs are just beginning.
Brian Morton writes for The Tablet from Scotland
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The BBC stated that a "decisive" no had been registered. Well despite their wishful thinking it was not decisive enough to put this issue away. There is real evidence of long term change underway. For good or ill complacent Labour have been damaged irreparably. The only good things to emerge: the ending of Scottish servitude to Westminster and the notion that Catholics will always vote for a Westminster/Labour cultural hegemony.