Well at last the cat is out of the bag, as the saying goes. And it turns out to be a big scaredy-cat at that, doesn’t it? The timid Scottish nation (well the ‘stay-at-homers’, the ones without the nous to flee the nest like the majority of Scots), plus the foreign de-campers and squatters, who all had a vote, decided in the end to shy away through blatant fear, and abandon any ambition for free and self determination, and stick with the status quo of being ruled by the English, as they have been for over three hundred years.

The bubble has been finally burst on the iconic image of the kilted outnumbered band of fearsome fighting savage killers, ravaging & obliterating with sword & dirk, their ‘armed to the teeth merciless enemies’, with the haunting sound of wailing bagpipes filling the night air. Oh no, we can only picture them now as the easily scared cat, startled and freeked-out, leaping into the air in terror at a sudden sound. The triumph of the NO vote has left the Scots without a momentous place in history – but there might still though be some recognition, by entries in the Oxford Dictionary and the like, to add the term scot as another synonym for coward, wussy, wimp, chicken, loser, weekling, and the like?

Oh, make no mistake; the indigenous Scottish residents didn’t simply drift into a decision on their future existence, did they? No, they produced a mind-blowing passionate demonstration of election involvement, commitment, and unbelievable turnout figures. The rest of us in the UK will be able to tell our grandchildren “we were there on the day, the day the Scots voted, the day when a dormant near corpse’d UK democracy finally gasped a breath of life”.

We on the outside recognized that we were witnessing a fight to the death, didn’t we? The two opposing clan Champions had to face the consequences of defeat surely, and one had to finally perish, however courageous the fight put up? And so it turned out. Alex Salmond, the SNP Leader and prime architect of the YES campaign LOST, so immediately resigned as First Minister of Scotland and as leader of his party. The first sign of a decent, honest, and principled politician we have seen in many-many decades. Many doubt if his adversary, PM David Cameron would have acted so honorably, had the tables been reversed. What do you think?

How will history now treat Salmond, the man who led Scotland to humiliating defeat in the referendum? The Scots are a fickle lot you see. Take, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the man who in 1746 lost Scotland at Culloden, who fled the battlefield to save his own skin, as his troops were slaughtered by the Duke of Cumberland’s English Army; thence he ran off to resume his fine life in France. He is still revered in Scottish folklore as a hero. However will Salmond now go down as the Scottish hated anti-hero?

In the outcome of any political confrontation, there are always winners and losers – and so there are here. You can be certain of one thing England will be the biggest winner, so those of us south of the border can rejoice with a glass of that 12 year old single malt whisky, can’t we?

[Oh, we will have some fun to follow & keep us all interested though – within hours of the result, the last-ditch ‘vote-winning’ promises of the NOs are starting to unravel, and our Westminster politicians are manipulating the Scottish outcome to promote other agendas!]