I’ve been following the trials and tribulations of a new government that seems, through renewed austerity and scandals over free clothes and Taylor Swift tickets from donors, to have concluded the shortest political honeymoon in history. I was watching a clip of (I think it was Iain Dale) – speaking with the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Dale, in the context of the proposed cut to Winter fuel allowance, says something like: “a leading economic expert has said that should Labour win the keys to nos. 10 & 11 Downing Street it should tax the wealthy and help those most in need. What do you think of that?”

Reeves: “well, that’s just not feasible”.

Dale: “Do you know who that expert was?”

Reeves: “No”.

Dale: “It was you”.

She doesn’t so much as blink.

“Well, things have changed” she says.

I forget which American journalist described politicians as 90% party machine and 10% human, but it seems he was bang on.

Through a series of fortunate circumstances, I was recently in the company of John Crace, the superb Guardian sketch writer and had the privilege of his wit and wisdom while driving him to the train station after he’d spoken at an event in Kirkcudbright. During the Q&A, someone had asked him what he considered to be the most important quality in his chosen field.

Crace paused and considered the question.

“A long memory”, he said.

He went on to develop his theme. The Grenfell enquiry had just concluded. But where is David Cameron, he asked rhetorically. Where is George Osbourne? Whither the architects of the brutal austerity whose rolling back of the regulations on cladding facilitated an unimaginable and wholly preventable tragedy? The former we can answer. David – now Lord – Cameron, the author of Brexit, the biggest foreign policy disaster in the modern era, is actually the Foreign Secretary. No, really. Like Iain Dale interviewing Rachel Reeves, Crace sees his job of reminding the reader of the kind of glaring hypocrisy that politicians would rather we just ignored.

Last week saw what I felt were quite muted commemorations of the tenth anniversary of the first Scottish Independence Referendum. It felt like both sides of the constitutional divide were reluctant to linger on the memory. Yes, because the loss still feels raw and it’s deeply dispirited at the way successive mandates have been squandered and momentum stalled. No, because the thought of nearly losing what was once a forty point lead still gives them the chills.

But a decade on, it’s also worth remembering what the No pitch was.

Staying in the EU. Cheaper energy bills. Cheaper food bills. Securing our place in the EU. Safer change within the UK. More powers for Holyrood. Virtual federalism.

I don’t need to labour the point here.

Absolutely nothing that was promised has been delivered. We are out of Europe against our will. Scottish democracy is under attack and rather empowering Holyrood, devolution is being rolled back. There is an ongoing cost of living crisis. In other words, everything we were told would happen with a Yes vote has happened with a No vote. Rather than seeing our No vote as an article of faith they have viewed it as a betrayal of weakness. It has emboldened them. It was always going to.

Ten years on, it still grates when you get lectured about respecting the result. The people who need to respect the vote aren’t the losers, but the winners who have utterly failed to live up to the promises they made to get over the line.

There’s hope, though.

It was once said that Scotland doesn’t have a history, it just has a longer memory for current events. We’ve woken up to the truth that normality isn’t going to be delivered through the normal political processes and institutions but through a wide and diverse movement. And that movement, while really thinking hard about what it wants Scotland to look like, must also never forget the promises that will never be fulfilled.

If we are to become the best version of ourselves Scotland, now more than ever, needs a long memory.