THE independence referendum was won on a fantasy, a vision of a fictional UK that existed purely in the imaginations of the Unionist parties.

Vote No, they said, for jobs that would be safe, vote No for shipbuilders. Only the jobs were never safe and the ships would never sail. Vote No, they said, for pensions that would be secure. Only the pensions have never been more insecure as the markets tank and the pound plummets. Vote No, they said, for greater powers and the most devolved parliament possible.

Only that turned out to be some tinkering with taxes and powers over road signs, and English votes for English laws. It meant road signs that said no entry. Vote No, they said, for a Scotland that was shielded and sheltered within the EU. Only now we’re being ripped out of the EU against our express will and left unshielded and unsheltered in the blistering cold winds of the demagoguery of Boris and Nigel.

When you enter a contract on the basis of a lie, the contract is void. The Unionist parties’ contract with Scotland has been voided by the actions of the Westminster parliament. It wasn’t Scotland which broke the union. It was the Unionist parties that broke two unions.

This is the biggest betrayal of their contract of trust with the people of Scotland, even bigger than English votes for English laws, even bigger than their neutering of the Smith Commission. Scotland is to be taken out of the EU even though we’ve voted to remain members by a considerably larger margin than we voted to remain a part of the UK. When you have irreconcilable differences, something has to give. And it won’t be Scotland this time.

When you don’t deliver what you promised in order to secure a vote, you lose any right to demand that the result of the vote is respected. When the best of both worlds means being bested by Boris, there’s no place left for Scotland within the UK. It’s not just the SNP that needs to be held to account. It’s the Unionist parties too. They promised Scotland something that they could not deliver. They promised the broad shoulders and the embrace of the UK. Only that embrace is crushing the life out of us.

Scotland spoke on Thursday, and Scotland said it was a proud European nation. That vote must be respected too. It would be a travesty of democracy for the Unionist parties to insist that Scotland must be torn out of Europe, even though every single council area in the country returned a majority vote for remain, while hypocritically demanding respect for a vote two years ago won on a false prospectus.

So now we stand before another independence referendum, another chance to decide whether Scotland should be a respected and equal member of a union of European nations, or a passenger at the back of the Boris bus, driving off to a destination to which we’ve said we don’t want to go.

We should weep for our English and Welsh friends who are left to brave the gales of the Tory right as they take their country off into a mid-Atlantic Thatcherite dystopia, but the best way to help them is to create an example of something better. We can build a Scotland founded on equality and tolerance, on inclusion and diversity. Or we can meekly submerge ourselves in a UK in which Nigel Farage is a national hero, where Scotland’s opinions count for as much as a euro coin in a Ukip bar.

Scotland staying in the UK out of a misplaced sense of solidarity with our English and Welsh sisters and brothers will do nothing to help them, and will only destroy us. There is a difference between solidarity and a suicide pact. True solidarity means the creation of hope. Let’s create hope, for the people of Scotland, for the poor and the marginalised, for the low-paid and the excluded. Let’s grasp this second chance, let’s not waste it.

We have work to do. The Scottish Government must reach out to the EU to gain assurances that Scotland can inherit the membership of the UK, with its opt-outs on Schengen and the euro. We need a plan for a Scottish currency. We need to assuage the doubts that went unanswered last time. But we start from a much stronger position than before.

There is no phalanx of Scottish Unionist MPs in Westminster. The Labour party has been brought down and humbled and won’t be so dogmatically opposed to independence as before. The idea of independence has been politically normalised and brought right into the mainstream of Scottish politics, where before it was on the margins.

But above all, we have a people who have experience of mobilising themselves, of creating a grassroots campaign. We know how to get our message out. We are not working as though we were in the early days of a better nation. We are working because we already are in those days. We are working to make a better Scotland a reality.