Is it really ten years? Doesn’t a decade fly when you’re having fun? When you’re subjected to grinding austerity? When you’re pulled out of the EU against your will? When your parliament’s powers are weakened so a government you didn’t vote for can play culture war politics? When pensioners shiver in unheated houses in one of the most energy-rich countries in the world?

I mean, phew, think what would have happened if Scotland had voted for independence and the No campaign’s dire warnings had come true. We might have had years of grinding austerity or been dumped out of the EU or had pensioners shivering in unheated houses …

But we’d never again have had governments we didn’t vote for. Or a House of Lords. Or Boris Johnson and Liz Truss ruining our country while they handed out billions of pounds of contracts to their political connections. Or, ach weel, we are where we are.

It’s easy to be down-heartened. It’s been a decade that’s really rammed home Mark Renton’s contemplation on the nature of Scottishness. Brexit, the buffoonery of BoJo, Covid cronyism, and the endless march of wealth inequality hand-in-hand with total failure to deal with the fact the climate is on fire.

Friends, we have had an object lesson in why you shouldn’t put your future in someone else’s hands.