FOR many voters who said Yes to independence two years ago the most dispiriting aspect of an otherwise vivid and rewarding campaign of civic engagement was the conduct of many senior figures in the Labour Party in Scotland. From the very beginning of the campaign Labour Party members who had dared publicly to consider voting for independence found that retribution from within the People’s Party was swift and brutal. Many were hounded out of constituency parties that they’d served faithfully for years. They were derided as “Nationalist stooges” by party managers who had foolishly assumed that these disruptors represented a tiny faction within the party.

It was one of several extraordinary misjudgements made by senior Labour Party figures and their highly paid strategists and advisers. Around one-third of Labour Party supporters were found to have voted Yes and as Labour’s referendum errors and misjudgements mounted up weekly, so the seeds of future electoral annihilation were being sown. These Labour supporters, sickened by the way they had been treated by their own party, turned their backs on it and walked into the arms of the SNP. They were joined by tens of thousands of others who felt betrayed and let down by the gusto with which senior party figures joined with the Tories on Unionist platforms.

The way many of them conducted themselves as the final result was delivered left an unpleasant after-taste. No-one is suggesting that Labour supporters who felt sincerely that Scotland’s future would be better served within the Union were not entitled to feel pleased. As the final outcome began to materialise, several facets of Labour triumphalism began to grate.

Tory fervour for the Union was rooted in cultural and social beliefs far different to those that ought to have fuelled Labour support for the status quo. In the three centuries or so that have elapsed since the Union was created it has helped to preserve the power, influence and wealth of a tiny and privileged syndicate representing a narrow bandwidth of interests. The Union provides the oxygen and means of sustaining this cartel.

The wars of adventure and the plundering of foreign lands to extend the empire was not done for the greater glory of Britannia and its people but to enrich a few aristocrats and industrialists by grabbing land, annexing goods and enslaving people. It was little wonder that the British establishment deployed all means at its disposal to save the Union.

There could have been a separate and authentic Labour narrative for supporting the Union which would have applied a moral and ethical clamp on any suggestions of sharing stages with the Tories.

There was also a degree of bemusement at the fervour and passion with which many Labour figures attacked independence and defended the Union. Would that Jim Murphy or Alistair Darling had displayed similar intensity and selfless daily commitment to defending the tens of thousands of their supporters whose families’ futures were being threatened by the party with whom they were all so keen to link arms during the referendum.

Andrew Tickell, who blogs as Lallands Peat Worrier, has written vividly of sharing a cigarette with me outside the BBC on referendum night as the outcome began to reveal itself. We were interrupted by Margaret Curran who was so overcome by the moment that, in the words of Andrew, she performed “a jinking danse macabre”. That moment is embedded in my consciousness, too, and won’t easily be dislodged.

The bleating and faux outrage of Murphy, Darling, Brian Wilson and a host of other Labour figures at the “nastiness” and “bitterness” of the campaign was dishonest and insulting to the 3.6 million people who had participated in what overseas observers were describing as “the gold standard” of democratic engagement.

That Darling is still advancing this nonsense two years later suggests that no lessons have been learned by Labour in Scotland even as it teeters on the brink of oblivion. Darling’s victory speech in the early hours of September 19 struck a shrill and sour tone and possessed not an ounce of grace or humility. It was no surprise when he scuttled off soon afterwards into the ample arms of Morgan Stanley to help the world’s super-rich preserve their assets – a fitting corollary to his efforts in saving the Union.

In marking the second anniversary of the Scottish independence referendum Darling also took the opportunity to offer a few words of warning to Nicola Sturgeon about the dangers of holding a second one. With the sort of wisdom he had used while leading a Better Together campaign which shipped 17 percentage points in less than two years, Darling said: “If she loses, she knows she would be finished. That’s why she is in no hurry to rush into it.”

Such a statement ignores the fact that, so long as the SNP keep winning Scottish elections by huge margins, its leader is virtually bombproof.

Only one political entity is in mortal political peril and that’s the Labour Party in Scotland. This party, which once possessed a sense of entitlement to the popular vote in Scotland, is now languishing behind the Tories, thanks in no small measure to the disastrous leadership of Better Together by Darling and his chinas. Several of their most high-profile figures still gleefully advance the myth of the referendum being “divisive” and beastly. In doing so, they simply give the party’s former supporters another reason not to return to the fold any time soon.

They persist in this fiction while sabotaging all attempts by its democratically elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to lead the party. The most important political task in the UK after that of actually governing the nation is that of opposing the serving administration so that there is proper scrutiny and accountability of its legislation. The attempted coup to remove Corbyn, supported by Labour’s Scottish leader, has wrecked any chance of proper opposition to the Tories at Westminster.

Yesterday, my friend David told me that his wife, a Tory supporter all her days, had just paid her £25 to join the Labour Party. “She just thinks that Corbyn’s the real deal: an honest politician who genuinely wants to improve the lives of the many. There’s definitely something stirring in the country.”

There is something stirring and it’s more important than ditching your values to earn a shot at compromised government. Once more though, Labour in Scotland, just as it did in the first independence referendum, has failed to read the sings of the times.