You won - now get over it

WE'VE ALL HEARD OF SORE LOSERS BEFORE - BUT NOW WE'VE GOT SORE WINNERS

The Scottish Independence Referendum has been and gone.  To me the result was sad, but not at all unexpected.  The Yes campaign had to take on the full might of the Westminster Establishment, and almost all of the UK's mass media.  Getting the message across was never going to be an easy task.  But the degree to which it politicised the population of Scotland was a truly remarkable achievement.

Perhaps inevitably, given the high stakes and emotions involved, there were a number of sore losers who vented their spleen on social media in the weeks and months that followed.  A few continue to do so and I hope that they'll soon fade away.  They are an embarrassment to the great mass of Yes voters.  Ludicrous suggestions that the poll was rigged in some way helps nobody.

However most Independence minded people have moved on and are now showing a high degree of positivity, of which more later.  A more curious trend on Twitter is the emergence of No voters who, living up to their characterisation as Bitter Together, seem unhappy with the win they actually got and want to exaggerate or lie about it in various ways.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - The Sore Winners.

Before providing an example of the species let me go back briefly over the relevant events on the timeline.  When the referendum was first proposed the Scottish Government suggested that there should be three options to choose from.  Firstly, full independence; secondly, the status quo; and finally, the option which became known as Devo Max, which delegated most government powers to Holyrood, with the main exceptions being foreign policy and the military.  That latter option was vetoed by the Cameron government.  Largely, it was thought, and as indicated by polls at the time, because it would have been a clear winner.  Such a potential loss of power and control was not something that Westminster was willing to risk.

So the vote became a simple Yes/No choice - Yes to have a fully independent Scotland, No to remain as we were.  And that remained the case when the first postal votes were being cast.  But then something happened.  A single poll suggested that Yes might be in the lead - and Westminster, indeed the whole UK Establishment, went into full panic mode.  In the days running up to the 18th of September we had the Gordon Brown intervention, then the three UK party leaders, and then the infamous 'Vow'.  All of which said that a No vote was a vote for greater powers for Holyrood, albeit vague and unspecified.  It wasn't quite Devo Max, but something heading in that direction.

Which meant that, on the 18th, we were no longer voting to make the same decision as those early postal voters had (which feels like a strange way to run a democratic exercise, but that's an issue for another time....).  Yes still meant the same as it always had, but now No meant something new, something a bit vague, but it most certainly involved change and a greater devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament.  I've no doubt there were many No voters who wanted to vote for the status quo, to keep things exactly as they were, but they no longer had that option.  It had been taken away from them at the last minute.

The votes were cast, there was a clear win for No.  On an impressive 85% turnout No got just over 55% of the votes cast, with almost 45% going to Yes.  No doubts there about the result (even if it was unclear exactly what was being voted for!).  The sore losers never had a leg to stand on.

In the immediate aftermath there was, of course, much sadness and despondency in the Yes camp.  Many people had invested a huge part of their lives into the campaign, which had a much stronger grass roots basis than did the No side.  But then something strange and wonderful started to happen.  From out of that gloom came a spirit of determination and positivity.  Yes campaigners had seen what could be achieved, against considerable odds, and decided that they must continue working towards what they believed in.

So many of the organisations which had sprung up in the run up to the referendum continued to meet and discuss and look for ways forward.  The three political parties who campaigned for Yes all saw huge increases in their membership numbers.  The SNP in particular grew to become the third largest party in the UK, bigger than the numbers of the Lib Dems and ukip combined.  It seems that around 2% of the adult population of the country are now SNP members, a remarkable figure.

Reflecting this mood a new national daily newspaper, with an editorial stance favouring independence, was given a trial run, met with success, and has become a (hopefully) permanent part of the Scottish media landscape.  Nobody expects another referendum in the near future, but it's clear that it could easily come about within the next ten years, with much depending on how the vague Vow is implemented.

And that's where we are today.  Polls currently show the SNP en route to capturing a large number of Westminster seats in May, although much can happen during the three and a bit months in between.  By contrast the Scottish Labour Party still appears to be in crisis, with it's new leader making desperate grabs for media attention, while the Lib Dems will surely suffer heavily for the betrayal of their values by Nick Clegg.  Yes voters have a lot to feel good about, a lot to be proud of.

So shouldn't No, who actually won the vote, be feeling the same?  If they do then it's being kept well hidden.  Already there seems to be a particular kind of unionist who keeps wanting to look back to last September, and to amplify and distort the result.  Yesterday provided a classic example.  A unionist troll posted this tweet actually inviting people to tell him where he was factually incorrect     Yes, yes, I know that I shouldn't feed the trolls, but there's some fun to be had in finding out how quickly they become abusive when confronted with the things they hate most - facts and evidence.

Of course it's obvious, from my words above, that there are two clear instances of misinformation in the presented graphic.  Firstly, the pie chart.  No statistician would ever suggest that you can impute a single intent to non participants.  To do so is either down to simple stupidity (an option which can't be discounted....), or a wilful attempt to mislead.  Either explanation leaves the perpetrator looking pathetic.

Secondly, the words "no thanks, we will stay as we are" are an outright lie, for the reasons already explained above.  Had he simply not been following events (yet feels qualified to pontificate on them!) or is this again an attempt to mislead?  And if the latter - why?  What sort of delusions motivate people to distort the result of a vote they actually won?  I know they say that history is (re)written by the victors, but such revisionism doesn't usually happen quite so quickly!

Oh, and was he abusive?  Of course he was, but only to call me vacuous, so pretty mild by troll standards!

The other common thread with The Sore Winners is their constant need to say "You lost, now forget about it".  Presumably they were brought up on that wise old saying "If at first you don't succeed - just give up."?  Or maybe I've always misunderstood that story about Bruce and the spider we were told in school?

It's a puzzle.  Maybe The Sore Winners just need to learn to accept that they won, back in September, and move on.  Get over it.  If they can't then there's an obvious question - what exactly is it that they're so afraid of?  Maybe, deep down, they realise that it's far from over....