Just as the polls closed in the 2014 Independence Referendum, the veteran socialist Jim Sillars took me aside as I made my way into the studio to present STV's results programme: "This is going to happen, Bernard."

The one time Labour MP turned SNP politician had been touring Scotland's housing schemes to spread the gospel of independence. Sillars had not been this moved by politics since, as a child, he witnessed Clement Attlee's Labour landslide of 1945.

The canny Sillars was not guilty of hubris. Rather, he had spent a lot of the preceding weeks among the demographic where support for independence was strongest. A trip to his own bolthole of Morningside would have told him a rather different story.

Those saying 'No Thanks' were not loud in campaigning terms, didn't put posters in their windows or stickers in their car but were part of what was a quiet majority.

Scotland Decides looked like being the kind of results programme that would keep voters up all night as the referendum went right down to the wire. Truth be told, it was broadcasting history as damp squib.

Clackmannan -Scotland in miniature- declared first and it declared for No. Alex Salmond started to draft a concession speech from the very first result as pundits and politicians waited to witness the inevitable. Scotland had rejected independence by a margin of 55% to 45%.

What no-one appreciated was that all was changed, changed utterly, to quote WB Yeats' observations of the politics of early twentieth century Ireland.

The echo of the final result was still ringing in the ears as a relieved David Cameron emerged from 10 Downing Street. In a move greeted with incredulity by some unionists he declared 'English Votes for English Laws' in what looked like a two-finger job by a bad winner.

Of more direct interest were his remarks on delivering The Vow, the pan-unionist pledge of more powers for Holyrood made at the eleventh hour as the referendum campaign momentarily threatened to run the way of a Yes vote.

When Lord Smith of Kelvin eventually recommended a raft of new tax powers for Holyrood, there was a sense in which his Commission looked to be playing catch up. The terms of the debate had shifted radically since those of the pre-indy poll.

Defeat deflated the Yes movement but not for long. For them, the key legacy of the campaign was that it had made independence look credible and achievable and it was only a matter of time before it was delivered. The Smith Commission was seen by them as the last throw of the dice, the final act of the state in the self-preservation stakes.

Less than eight months later at a UK General Election, the voters delivered a political earthquake that boggled the minds of the commentariat and disturbed the equilibrium of the electoral calculus. The SNP won 56 of the country's 59 seats, winning 50% of the vote. There was no September 2014 hangover, just a dividend that recast Scottish politics.

In 2015 another dynamic, which would later become a trend, heralded its arrival. Labour was enduring a terrible time at the polls. Much of their base had drifted to the SNP in what appeared to be more in anger rather than in sorrow. Having broken an umbilical cord, many of these voters would not return. And for the more unionist of Labour voters, the Tories seemed to take a harder line with the SNP.

Having delivered devolution in 1999, Labour has been squeezed by the SNP on social democratic politics and by the Scottish Conservatives on the constitution. Throw in a merry go round of changing leaders and a paucity of hard thought on policy and strategy and you had the ingredients that would send a once dominant force to intensive care. To this day they remain on life support.

And then, Europe.

David Cameron almost lost Scotland in 2014 but less than two years later he had lost a continent. The EU referendum was a means of healing a civil war in the Conservative Party. Cameron's calculation proved to be one of stupefying optimism as raw politics and an unexpected result buried his premiership.

History will record that he was not a man immersed in deep thoughts about the consequences of risky decision making.

The quest for Brexit gave us Theresa May whose entire Premiership was a slow burn to resignation. She borrowed something of Mr Cameron's love affair with miscalculation when she called a General Election in 2017. May breathed fresh life into UK Labour and sowed the seeds of perennial grief as the voters delivered a hung Parliament.

As unpredictability became the new norm, the SNP lost ground at the 2017 General Election losing votes and 21 seats. The Scottish Conservatives came second, winning 13 seats in the process as Scottish Labour managed 7 seats and 27% of the vote.

The First Minister, no doubt perplexed by the reversal of 2017, put indyref2 demands on hold, uncertain that perhaps another swing was due on the constitutional seesaw.

It is a truism in politics that constitutional issues put bread and butter politics on hold. That was true of 2014 and the independence referendum and so too, it was with the aftermath of the EU referendum.

The inability of a hung Parliament to agree a deal has brought democratic institutions to a state of paralysis and fuelled electoral bitterness. Views are now entrenched more than ever with the middle ground buried by polar opposites as 'out at any cost' joins battle with 'reverse as quickly as possible'.

The Brexit swamp has claimed a Prime Minister, led to accusations of skulduggery against both the Speaker and the current Prime Minister whose very motives and use of power is now being forensically analysed by the Supreme Court.

The Yes movement tried to make independence a made in Scotland movement. And yet the intergovernmental skirmishes over Brexit, the debate about a hard border in Ireland and the inability of Westminster to break a political impasse has raised questions about the sustainability of the totality of governance in the UK.

It is not impossible if independence happens it will be delivered in Scotland but engineered by a collapse in confidence in UK institutions.

Uncertainty and unpredictability are now the forces that dominate the body politic. A hard Brexit delivered by a new Conservative government would on the surface look like the outcome most likely to see independence demands grow.

And yet nothing is certain. Indyref2 would reopen the European debate all over again. Brexit will not end with Brexit as its ramifications cast a long shadow over any new independence poll. Currency, the achilles heel for Yes in 2014, would be relegated as any new plebiscite is dominated by EU membership and the terms that would attach to an independent Scotland's application.

I'm running ahead of myself. We are still not yet in indyref2 territory. The upcoming General Election might however clarify that in time for the festive season.

What did September 18, 2014 actually represent? Well, in the compartmentalised world of the here and now we can say it recast Scottish politics, provided the bedrock on which a dominant SNP rest, led to a Scottish Conservative revival and induced a slide in the fortunes of Scottish Labour.

That is the here and now judgement; it is unlikely to be the one that history bestows on the events of five years ago. We are not far enough along the timeline of events that shape nations to be definitive about five years ago. The real legacy of 2014 is still being written.