HAMISH MACDONELL:

After Brexit the UK is divided more than ever. Can this great country really survive, or is it...

AS the hours have turned into days since the Brexit vote, so we have been told to wait ‘until the dust settles’ to work out what it really means. But the truth is that the dust won’t settle in Scotland: it has been shaken up so thoroughly that things will not be the same again.

The reality is stark and deeply depressing: there is now a new border between Scotland and England.

It is real and visible – you can see it in any map of the Brexit vote. Scotland voted one way and England voted the other.

During the 2014 referendum, the Better Together campaign championed the notion that we really were better together, that people in Dundee were the same as people in Dudley, that people in Edinburgh were the same as people in Epping Forest.

Well, last week’s vote appears to have blown that out of the water. Dudley voted 68-32 to Leave while Dundee voted 60-40 to Remain.

Epping Forest voted 63-37 to Leave while Edinburgh voted 7426 to Remain.

Even in those areas which were side by side across the Border, the difference was marked.

The Scottish Borders voted 5842 for Remain, yet over the Border in Carlisle the result was 60-40 for Leave. Had there been any part of Scotland which broke the national trend, then it might be different now, but there wasn’t. Every single area in Scotland – even those which opposed the EEC back in 1975 – voted to Remain.

The new Brexit map of the UK shows uniform, unbroken support for the EU from the tip of Shetland to the south-west corner of Dumfriesshire – and it is this, combined with all of that Leave support across large swathes of England, that makes this result so difficult for so many Scots to take.

It is this huge point of difference between the two countries that has prompted anger among Scots. It has fuelled a feeling that Scots are right, that they must be right because the whole country voted one way, and that the other lot are wrong.

And who are the other lot? They are the English.

This is what lies at the heart of the Brexit vote and it is this that is going to cause so much trouble that it may spell the end for the United Kingdom.

It does seem incredible but, for the first time in modern political history, that argument that we are all the same, that we are all in it together, that our values are the same, whether we live in Glasgow or Great Yarmouth, just isn’t going to cut it any more.

But it goes deeper than that. There will be Scots who will look at the results and not just be disappointed and angry with the way things turned out, but dismayed that their liberal, tolerant approach to the world has been usurped by what they will take to be the inward-looking, xenophobic intolerance of the English.

They will feel that, at a stroke, one of the strongest and most important causes of Unionism has been swept away.

And that is why Nicola Sturgeon believes she can win the next independence referendum.

It is because Scots who, two years ago, gave their all in defence of the Union now feel unwilling to defend it.

They felt that they stood by the Union when it was under threat, and they have been betrayed by the very Union which they protected so valiantly in 2014.

Some of these Unionists will switch sides and join the Yes campaign next time, of that there is no doubt.

Others will try to defend the Union but with resentment and such a lack of enthusiasm that they will hardly be able to make a difference, while others will just sit on their hands, resigned to the fact that the choice they will be forced to make is such an unpalatable one – an independent but outward-looking Scotland or a closed and insular United Kingdom. Now this impression of Scotland being somehow open and tolerant and inclusive and England being the opposite isn’t entirely true.

There were more than one million Scots who voted to Leave the EU and 13 million people in England who voted to Remain.

But this has to do with impressions and perceptions and these are desperately important. They are the only way we can make sense of a decision like this. We have to break it down into manageable, understandable chunks.

And, when you do that, it just comes back to that map: Scotland voted one way, while England voted the other.

But there is something else, too. One of the reasons that so many Scots voted to remain in the United Kingdom in 2014 was because of totally understandable caution.

With good cause, they believed the warnings about economic collapse, of rising unemployment and falling house prices, or business departures and currency flight.

They decided to stay with the status quo because the alternative just seemed too big and scary to contemplate.

But, by voting for Leave, the rest of the UK has ripped up the rule book. The Brexit vote has re-set the gauge as far as shock results are concerned.

Because the UK has now voted for Brexit and shown it is prepared to ignore every warning, to accept a plunging pound, a stock market crash and an economic catastrophe, then Scots will feel they can do exactly the same next time they make a momentous decision.

At the next independence referendum, there will be a sense that, well, if the UK voted for Brexit and survived, then we can vote for independence and survive, too.

All those warnings from the original ‘project fear’ will have much less resonance next time round, simply because of the Brexit vote. Now, I am not going to argue for one moment that Miss Sturgeon will have it all her own way as she fights, once again, to wrest Scotland out of the United Kingdom.

She still has huge problems with the currency, with the lack of oil revenues and the collapse of the North Sea oil industry. She will have new problems with borders and a public which has little faith in a crisis-hit EU.

But she will have extra support in her corner. She will have Unionists, angry and disillusioned at the betrayal they feel has been handed to them by their English cousins, on her side.

She will have pro-Europeans who, before last week, thought they shared the same values as their cousins in England but who now believe they live in a different country in a different age.

And she will have waverers who opted for the status quo last time, frightened at the huge consequences of a Yes vote, who now feel they have been given a licence to vote for momentous change, safe in the knowledge that nothing they do will be as seismic as last week’s decision to tear ourselves away from Europe.

Remember, the Nationalists were only five points off victory last time. They are not far off now, and this Brexit vote is going to push them closer still.

Indeed, the Brexit vote drove a wedge between Scotland and England which was never there before. Now it is there – just look at the map. And the worrying reality for those who love the Union is that it may be too big and divisive ever to be repaired again.

New Border between Scotland and England Accept a plunging pound and a market crash