Friendship and solidarity must prevail, as the fog clears

The final days has provided one crucial clarification though – the No campaign is capable of great passion and powerful rhetoric.

Mocked, endlessly criticised, a reputation dragged through the muck. Despite it all – it has fallen upon Gordon Brown to save the Union. Our video of his  final barnstorming speech of the campaign has been watching nearly 200,000 times already. It was the perfect union of head and heart – and it was the greatest speech of his career. It may not move votes (this debate has raged for two years after all) but activists this morning are inspired, and the spring in their step is a little higher.

On the other side of the debate, there is enthusiasm too. For the most ardent of Yes voters, the moment they have longed for is in their grasp – if they can defy the predictions of every single pollster. Last night some of their number pelted No campaigners attending a rally with water bombs and called them traitors. In Glasgow, photos circulated on social media of Yes campaigners appearing to climb the cenotaph – a monument to Scottish (and British war dead).

These are not the majority of Yes voters by any means, but this is now the tenor of the Yes campaign – stoked and invoked by the “Team Scotland” rhetoric of Salmond. In the event of a No vote, the traitor myth will be out in force.

Passions will run high on both sides in these final few hours as this referendum, and perhaps the Union, come to a close.

This is the time for final, final messages. So here’s mine, which I won’t labour. I love Scotland. It has always and does feel like home to me. Scotland’s cities feel like the cities of home. Scotland’s remarkable countryside blends seamlessly with majestic North Northumberland. The things we have built together as a nation – a health service, a true union of people and peoples, one of the world’s strongest economies and most emulated democracies – speaks for itself. The friendship shown to me by Scottish people not just during this campaign, but throughout my life, reminds me (heart and head) that our Union is more than constitution.

It is a society of equals, and of friends. And it would break my heart and shatter my sense of identity to see that come to an end.

I never would have thought that it would be Gordon Brown’s words to which I’d turn today. And yet I endorse them completely, as I step out into Edinburgh, and the fog clears….