Online trolls on both sides remain an embarrassment, but there are hopeful signs, writes Laura Waddell

Another independence referendum has always seemed inevitable. Those who don’t want it have made it the focus of their election leafleting ever since; pre-emptive attempts by opposition leaders to dampen demand for a question on Scotland’s constitutional path were always going to be futile, and jumping-the-gun statements by proindependence figures unwilling to wait for Article 50 to become more clearly defined added little impetus. It has always been when, not if.

But post-brexit, the prospect of another referendum on Scottish independence feels different than anticipated when we were still reeling from the results of 2014, unaware the UK political landscape would mutate so dramatically. Now there’s a leaner, more direct feel, with rationale for independence inseparable from the tangible goal of retaining EU membership for Scotland, and Sturgeon’s cool-headed figure at its helm. The pro-union threat that Scotland would lose its EU status on departure from the UK gathers dust on archived leaflets, but is unforgotten.

A Scottish independence campaign while Brexit looms will become a more urgent one. The 2014 referendum gave necessary space to dreaming, a phase the nation probably benefited from going through. The wish trees were much maligned but captured the wider zeitgeist of possibility, with citizens asking ourselves what we actually wanted for the country we live in. Making anything new requires imagination. Some thoughts need to be big and boundless to shift the parameters as to what’s actually possible at all.

At times the answer to what Yes and No voters alike imagined for Scotland was abstract and sprawling,

but it tells us something of how engaged the population became with the binary choice on the ballot, and its depth of meaning. Campaigning bloomed around various themes, and the plurality of small special interest groups with considered and at-times competing visions felt healthy for democratic engagement. This time, however, the postbrexit ramifications for Scotland’s constitutional question will shape the debate in a different way.

We learned a lot from 2014. There are elements we should keep from indyref that Brexit lacked. Questioning modern Britain in a substantive way, for one. My knee-jerk reaction as an undecided voter early on in the indyref campaign was one of cynicism; realising that should be applied to the Union too came a little later. Like many others I came to consider Scotland’s position politically and culturally within the UK in a way I hadn’t before.

The level of detail was another credit to the debate. There were moments of swearing at the TV, legitimate dissatisfaction with the media as well paranoia about bias, and while in recent years we’ve grown weary of artificially polarised media segments blunting complex issues, the nature of fairly covering a question with two options means it made sense to often have a Yes and No voter go head to head. The crucial context was regularly hearing from experts on our airwaves in addition to that – economists, historians, environmentalists and more.

From that, I learned so much about the country I live in and how it operates. Of course, there was sentimentalism, but agriculture, fishing, trade, culture, currency, and history became discussion points in a national conversation. Citizens combed boring documents and