Whenever it seemed during the independence referendum campaign that the lights might go out on the union, many of its supporters in the UK commentariat deployed a well-worn strategy. They all began to spin a well-rehearsed narrative that talked of blood on the streets of a Scotland teetering on the brink of anarchy as mobs of violent Nationalist extremists roamed from town to town seeking out the first born of unionist families.

That a state of martial law was not declared and that tanks didn’t appear once more in Glasgow’s George Square was only down to the kind indulgence of prime minister David Cameron. At any moment during the frenetic last few days of the campaign I was expecting to be offered counselling to help me come to terms with the distressing scenes around me.

The reality was somewhat different. A two-year festival of democracy took place in Scotland that resulted in the highest turnout ever for a UK political vote and thousands of people having scales lifted from their eyes. It was this that seemed to perturb unionist-supporting commentators most. The very idea that politics might be conducted from below and not from above and that they weren’t the sole arbiters of what was good for the rest of us was causing attacks of apoplexy to break out in the palaces of the right in this country.

Supporters of a Yes vote were routinely depicted as tribal and unstable, while the unionists were coolly detached, rising above the chaos with their calm reasoning. Often though, as the weeks ticked down towards 18 September, it was unionist supporters I witnessed beginning to lose touch with reality. It was during these crucial last few weeks of the referendum campaign that the Labour party in Scotland began to wither and die. The sight of Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown, John Reid and Jim Murphy seeming to display more passion for preserving the ancient rights of the Westminster privileged few than they ever did for social justice was distressing.

To observe Labour supporters rejoicing with Conservatives as the outcome became clear sealed the party’s fate for at least a generation to come. It seems that this party has learned nothing from the lessons of the independence referendum. And the fanaticism that they routinely ascribe to independence supporters seems now to have become the preserve of the opponents of Scottish nationalism.

As the SNP headed for the banks of the river Clyde this weekend and its annual spring conference its gas ought to have been set at a peep. The year thus far hasn’t been kind to the SNP government. The absence of anything radical and innovative in its policy-making has been manifest most starkly in big departments such as health, education and justice, each of whose hapless ministerial incumbents looks like they are being overwhelmed by the sheer scale of its responsibilities.

Its role in defeating extended Sunday opening hours in England and Wales while permitting the same in Scotland is breathtaking in its hypocrisy while its proposed named person legislation is simply sinister. Last week’s GERS (Government Expenditure and Revenue in Scotland) numbers seemed to deal a significant blow to the economic case for independence.

Instead of feeling downbeat and subdued however, the party was approaching Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre with a spring in its step, much of it caused by the misjudgment and absence of critical awareness of its main opponents in Scotland. The SNP performs best when its dander is up and when its supporters believe it is the victim of the usual unionist mass hysteria when any economic forecast does not exactly predict a bowl of cherries.

To observe the reaction to the GERS figures was to wonder if the end of the world had been averted by the vote to remain part of the United Kingdom. The figures, which were first published as a Tory wheeze in the early 1990s to show that Scotland exists only via the benevolence of London, showed that North Sea oil revenues fell drastically between 2013-14 and 2014-15, leading to a deficit of £14.9bn. Depending on how deep your unionism goes, this was either a cause for wild rejoicing or an opportunity to gloat. Some in the Scottish Labour party (Standing Up For Scotland) filled their boots and did both.

In the media, there was a contest among splash headline writers to deploy the most apocalyptic word with which to greet the GERS figures. Some economic snake oil salesmen actually make money selling street corner analyses of the figures to the foaming wing of the unionist cause. Nowhere in the so-called analysis was it pointed out that these figures are for a single year; that economic forecast is better conducted over 10 years; that Scotland’s economy over the last 10 years has been robust and that they are, as Dr Neil McGarvey of Strathclyde University’s School of Government and Public Policy pointed out, “by no means definitive measurements of what Scotland’s public accounts would look like”.

Preceding the economic forecasts had been another extended bout of Scottish self-loathing as columns of the usual suspects emerged to suggest that this politically vibrant, outward-looking and educated country was incapable of producing a nightly, one-hour BBC news bulletin. Meanwhile, Question Time on Thursday night seemed to have tracked down every Tory voter on Tayside when it visited Dundee and shoehorned them into what passed for a “balanced” audience.

The Scottish Labour party haemorrhaged support to the SNP because, thanks to Brown, Darling and Murphy, it morphed into the Conservative party for the two years prior to the referendum. To witness the unrestrained cheerleading for the union that broke out on Labour’s Holyrood benches when the GERS figures were being debated at first minister’s questions last Thursday was to know that this party is still scrabbling about in the dark, looking for its moral compass.

Would that many of them had shown as much passion about the deep social inequality and real divisions in society that their beloved union has brought to the lives of Britain’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens.