The Correx boards have been scrapped, the leaflets curated and Twitter is almost completely rid of twibbons. Now that the referendum is over we face a raft of challenges and opportunities as a party. It is not an exaggeration to say that this vote has ripped families apart, caused feuds between old friends and has left the country a more angry and tense place. Our party has a role to play repairing these wounds, uniting our country and winning back voters who are currently in a state of despair over politics in Scotland. Alongside the challenge to win back these voters also lies the opportunity to reach out to new voters, ex-Labour voters and people who have never thought about voting Labour before but were open to our message during the referendum.

As we got closer to 18 September voters in the most deprived areas would tell us more and more frequently on the doors that they felt that we were not offering a positive vision for the future and that independence and the Scottish National party were offering the hope that they were asking for and needed. In their eyes we were the anti-SNP and therefore anti-hope. To win these voters over again we need to show them the distinct positive differences between us and the SNP that do not revolve around independence. Now that the referendum’s over we have that chance to present a clear vision of how we want to change Scotland that does not hinge on a constitution.

There has never been a more opportune moment to do this. Politics in Scotland is in flux. People are looking for something to rally behind, something that will unite the country and give them hope again. The SNP are preoccupied with their internal leadership and deputy leadership elections and are in denial that 18 September ever happened, a member if the Scottish parliament defecting from the most disciplined machine in the parliament and a party who are recovering from a defeat in a referendum that is at the core of their philosophy. This is where we need to step in. This is the perfect time to begin to introduce policies that we will run on in 2016 and move the national debate onto the issues that people care about. In the end most people did not vote for or against independence because they cared about the constitution or a flag, they voted because they were worried about their job, wanted the best education for their kids or wanted to protect their pensions. These are enduring problems that people are still desperate for solutions to.

This is why right now introspection is the last thing we need. So much time has been taken up by this referendum that could have been spent trying to fix the problems that independence was apparently going to cure, that willingly dwelling on it much further seems counter-productive. Suggestions of rebranding or pointless pacts that we will not ever campaign with the Tories again are short-sighted, petty and miss the point of the most valuable lessons of the referendum. Mainly that people from a wide variety of causes and backgrounds can and will still unite if the motive is great enough, that most voters do not split easily along party lines and that people prefer it if you paint them a vision of the future rather than write them a book about the past. Only people within the Scottish Labour party will care about what is essentially an internal issue, whereas people outside the party will either view it as a cynical rehash or as evidence of a party riddled with infighting. How can we expect people to see us as the party to unite the country if we appear to be wasting time arguing amongst ourselves? If we define ourselves by this constitutional debate we are letting the SNP dictate our agenda and playing into the type of party politics that people have long since tired of.

Aside from this we are moving in the right direction. Last week Johann Lamont proposed that both main parties work together to tackle the problems faced by the NHS in Scotland but was rebuffed by a taken-aback SNP, whose aggressive response suggests that they cannot easily get out of their anti-Labour mindset and stop playing party politics. This mature gesture of putting politics aside for the benefit of everyone was a dramatic change in tone from the debate we have had for the last two and a half years and was in stark contrast to the anti-SNP impression some voters have of us. The SNP’s inability to see this as an opportunity and their knee-jerk anti-Labour reaction to anything we propose is an obvious weakness and one that can be taken advantage of again.

We also now have the opportunity to woo the thousands of newly enfranchised voters. In particular young voters, engaged in politics for the first time and less likely to be split along party lines, who will almost all be old enough to vote in the Scottish parliament elections in 2016, and formerly apathetic voters who are now engaged in the debate about the future of their country and are invested in its outcome. The challenge will be to keep them engaged with our politics and convince them of our vision for Scotland over the next year and a half.

Right now the country needs something to unite it, a vision that people can believe in, that focuses on the people and the problems in this country rather than party politics and borders. I believe we are the only party in Scotland who can deliver that vision.

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Catherine Vallis is a member of Progress. She tweets @CateVallis

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Photo: Scottish Labour