This weekend is ten years on from the results being declared following the Scottish Independence Referendum, and for those Liberals, like me, who voted Yes to Independence, much has changed since then.

I read much of what was written about Scotland’s Future in the White Paper and elsewhere, and wrote a number of articles at the time about my own thoughts. In the end, I decided that the SNP’s economic forecast for an independent Scotland was complete nonsense, but still thought the risk was worth taking, of voting for an independent future, for a number of reasons.

The first being that it is not often in life you get a chance to start again, and I did not think the existing system of governance in the United Kingdom by first past the post would ever change. North of the border, PR was the norm at Council and Scottish elections and back then the European elections too. In relation to Europe I believed, unlike most in the Liberal Democrats, that a pro-European Scotland could be dragged out of Europe by a vote in the rest of the UK for Brexit, something that later became all too clear. Ten years ago, I believed that the “independence” being offered by the SNP was much closer to our long-standing policy of a Federal UK than the status quo we ended up with after the No vote won the day. In the end, I accepted that I was on the losing side and remained in the UK, later to be taken out of the EU, against the vote of most Scots.

Ten years on, there are at least three factors that have made me decide that if these was another referendum on Independence (which the PM has declared there will not be under a Starmer led Government) I would now vote No.

One was the outbreak of Covid, which relied on the UK Government’s furlough scheme to save many from economic disaster, which it is unlikely that Scotland, on its own, could have financed. The second is the outbreak of war in Ukraine. While an independent Scotland may well have remained in the EU and NATO, the risk to smaller countries, such as the Baltic states, has dramatically increased in recent years. As part of the UK, Scotland is a safer country, despite my concerns over issues such as the UK’s position on the use of nuclear weapons. Finally, now that we are out of the EU, the economy of Scotland with a large budget deficit is not in a position to apply for re-entry into the European Union, so the future would, unlike ten years ago, be as an independent country outside the EU, which would require Scotland to go through another Brexit type of separation with its most important trading partner. We now know that doesn’t work out well for the party leaving in so many ways.

As the case for independence has weakened, and as the SNP still campaign for it, the case for a Federal United Kingdom has never been stronger.

* John Barrett was a Liberal Democrat Member for 40 years and is a former, Edinburgh City Councillor and Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West.