Scotland has spoken decisively, but its ‘No, thanks’ is as much to the status quo as it is to separation.

Scotland’s turnout – at 84.5 per cent – marks the return of Scotland’s great Enlightenment tradition of deliberation and participation, and the margin of the ‘No’ victory settles the question of Scottish independence for a generation. But nobody in the Labour party, on either side of the border, should become complacent when examining the way this campaign was won.

More than 1.6 million people voted to opt out of the most successful multinational state the world has ever known, and most of them were in places where historically you could have weighed the Labour vote. The loss of gorgeous, gallus Glasgow – home to so many Labour giants of the past – is the starkest warning of all. How can a city that has been the recent theatre of Westminster by-elections, fiercely contested council elections and Holyrood upsets have such weak contact data that volunteers were sent to doors on the basis the family had quite liked Labour the last time we spoke to them; when Nickelback were still in the charts?

Nor can we be satisfied with the loss of so many left-leaning votes to the other side. We should be grateful that on Wednesday – the eve of poll – Scots were given a positive, patriotic, progressive case for a No vote, but we have much work to do to re-establish Labour as the natural home for Scots fighting for social justice. ‘Yes’ bumper stickers encouraging people to vote for ‘bairns not bombs’ came too close for comfort to summing up the long campaign: there are not many members of the Labour party who were inspired by the prospect of talking about Trident while opponents went door to door chatting about childcare.

Labour activists, therefore, faced a dual problem: they were not clear until late in the day how they could argue that this was a progressive, insurgent choice, and they got ground down by the sheer relentlessness of ‘Yes’ campaigners. That so many of them still kept the faith – and did the work – is to their enormous credit.

Many progressive friends elsewhere in the UK and abroad expressed their hopes for Scotland’s ‘liberation’ from neoliberalism, a Conservative government or some as yet unspecified ‘oppression’. The instincts were kind, but the judgements misplaced, because, while others may have been reading about the attempted flowering of a nation, I was watching the attempted curdling of a culture.

The ‘Yes’ campaign can be proud of running ‘No’ so close and of the way it enthused many thousands who have never been involved in politics before. But we should all be chilled by the behaviour of a (very) tiny minority whose loutishness has soured this great carnival of democracy of ours. Because when folk attempt to serve an ‘eviction notice’ on one of Scotland’s most prominent Asian politicians, that is not civic nationalism. When you ask me to account for ‘how many English’ are in the group I’m standing with, that is not civic nationalism. And if you tell an English visitor it is time ‘to keep Scotland for the Scots’, that is not civic nationalism. The first minister has done an admirable job of removing fanatics from his party; it is time he denounced their attempted association with his movement too.

There is, of course, also a risk of a populist backlash down south. But as conversations begin in earnest about what powers are most legitimately (and symmetrically) held where, the most important message from England remains the one sent north last Monday: let’s stay together. Whatever happens in the months to come, it is now clear on both sides of the border that the sacrifices of pooling and sharing resources are both understood and embraced, and the redistributive nature of the union remains its animating force. That is the underlying progressive victory of today and the real story from which Labour should take heart.

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Kirsty McNeill is a former adviser at 10 Downing Street. She tweets at @kirstyjmcneill

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Photo: Brent MacAloney