The Scottish independence referendum is now history. Some 4.2 million residents of Scotland, anyone age 16 and older, were eligible to vote, 97% of those eligible were registered and close to 85% actually voted. Reporting on the vote, the New York Times noted, “Mary Pitcaithly, the chief counting officer for the referendum, said final figures showed the pro-independence camp securing 1,617,989 votes while their opponents took 2,001,926, representing a turnout of almost 85 percent.” In the end, it wasn’t even all that close, as far as these things go, with 55% voting “no” and 45% pushing for independence. While Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow went for independence, Edinburgh voted “no” convincingly – and even Aberdeenshire, the home district of Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond,the leader of the independence movement, went “no”.

As a result of this triumph for “no” and the continuation of a United Kingdom, the pro-independence movement’s leaders have agreed that this vote means the topic of independence is off the table for a generation. There have been some sour grapes statements by some pro-independence politicians that “fear won”, but, by-in-large, people seem to be taking the result the way the campaign was fought – sensibly and quite peaceably.

The voting began early in the morning on Thursday and concluded late in the evening and by morning, when Edinburgh delivered a resounding no vote; the mathematical chances for a yes vote were effectively finished. In fact, even before the day of the election, something close to 20% of those Scots eligible to vote had already cast their ballots before Thursday’s voting began, using mail-in ballots. (This is actually part of a larger trend worldwide. For example, in some western states in the US, it has become common for a major share of the voting to take place as advance balloting well before election day.)

While the occasional sports star like Andy Murray came out strongly for independence, in the days just before the vote, the leadership of the Tories, Labour and the Liberal-Democrats all came out forcefully in favour of serious negotiations that would give yet further, new powers to the Scottish parliament over local and regional matters, just as long as the Scottish electorate endorses Scotland’s remaining within the United Kingdom. While the referendum had initially been framed as a simple binary choice – a “yes” for independence or a “no” for staying within the UK – and while this late-in-the-day, joint, tri-parte declaration seemed to reflect a growing panic on the part of the British political establishment, it also effectively reframed the referendum as a choice between the uncertainties of independence and the possibilities of a new political order for Scotland that would evolve out of some promised, sustained negotiations between Westminster and Scotland, post-referendum.

Beyond this political declaration, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown had criss-crossed Scotland in support of a “no” vote on this referendum. In the final days of this campaign, he gave a stem-winder of an oration that has been called the best speech of political career. Brown evocatively portrayed the vote as a referendum on an embrace of a bigger vision of British society – and three centuries of shared history. Brown had spoken movingly, saying in his final speech, “There is not a cemetery in Europe that does not have Scots, English, Welsh and Irish lined side by side. We not only won these wars together, we built the peace together. What we have built together by sacrificing and sharing, let no narrow nationalism split asunder.”

Moreover, a whole posse of heavyweight (mostly) American economists – individuals who rarely fully agree with each other on most topics – also weighed in on the side of a “no” vote, explaining the baleful economic consequences of Scottish independence. Among others, this group included former Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan, Nobel Memorial Prize economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Scottish economist-historian Niall Ferguson and the head of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (and a former senior figure with the Bank of England), Adam Posen. (PIIE is a major voice on economic issues in the world’s think tank community.)

Eventually, the vote came to be seen as a “head versus heart” kind of thing. For many, while the heart had whispered seductively that Scotland could have a glorious future as a kind of Celtic Scandinavia – with those oil and natural gas revenues dedicated to increasing the country’s social benefits package, the creation of a country as a neutral, nuclear-free state, and a kinder gentler nation at one with its (admittedly warrior-like) history and destiny – the head had murmured very differently.

Here, the head began counting up the expected costs of an entirely new national government, the likelihood oil and natural gas revenues will be unpredictable and that they will – soon enough – become declining assets. Moreover, for many, it seemed to become clearer that a yes vote would provoke deeply disruptive monetary uncertainties – the kind that would come from the hurried departure of major banks and other enterprises from Scotland, as well as the disruptions from establishing and supporting a new and vulnerable currency. And none of these issues even included the potential for those exhausting negotiations that a new Republic of Scotland would have faced in order to maintain – or obtain – member status within the EU (and perhaps NATO), as well as all those other bodies that have the UK in a leadership position. NATO, of course, would have been a particularly dicey problem, since the Scottish independence folks had pledged to make their new nation a nuclear free zone – and the British nuclear sub deterrent force is now berthed in Scotland.

The survey data just before the poll had given the no vote some 53% of the total – with a 3% margin of error. Significantly, there was the theory that a significant number of voters were telling the pollsters they were still undecided at the time of the survey, even though they had actually made up their minds but were reluctant to admit to pollsters (let alone family and friends) that they would be voting for a continuation of the status quo.

Such circumstances may well have contributed to the final tally – or perhaps some people simply weren’t sure whether they should listen to their head or heart until they stepped up to mark their ballots. Curiously, as each district’s tally was announced, the polling officers read off the yes and no votes and then the number of discarded ballots – including people who marked both choices. Perhaps some voters actually were unable to make up their minds even as they actually voted.

Now that the independence movement is off the table for this generation, the hard process of negotiating even more devolution of authority and power over any number of government functions from London’s parliament and bureaucracy will commence. The political class in Westminster has now publicly agreed to this, and the sheer number of voters who would have almost carried the day will almost certainly ensure that this pledge will be carried out honestly.

In fact, a growing number of people are already saying that such negotiations should not be limited to Scotland’s circumstances. The devolution of political power should also be just as true for England, Wales and Northern Ireland as for Scotland. Each of those regions similarly should not have their fortunes largely determined by the politicians in the corridors of Westminster. In this sense, a much more federalized United Kingdom is beginning to be thought about as the shape of British political life for the future.

And even though Scottish independence will now not happen, the very process of this peaceful referendum still seems certain to give encouragement to those in other places in Europe and beyond – where the traditional and historic ties of a nation can no longer easily contain the aspirations for sovereignty by other ethnic, racial and religious groups inside a larger nation (like Catalonia and Spain, for example). Especially for Europe, this trend is both a function of the end of the Cold War that lessened the impact of national defence in defining the nation-state, as well as the increasing authority over many of the traditional functions of those nation-states by supra-national bodies such as the EU and the European Central Bank, those lessening the impact of those older nation-states on the life of their citizens and slackening allegiance to those countries.

Because the independence movement has been thwarted, Britain is now spared political bun fights over what will happen to Balmoral, the site for all those regular summer (and winter) vacations by the royal family where they get a chance to wear kilts without embarrassment. And the Scots will be spared any kind of debate about whether they must reconcile their strong republican inclinations with having a royal family. As a result, any scratching around to find an appropriate descendant of Bonnie Prince Charlie of the House of Stuart to reign over their land – as a final, long-awaited act of revenge for the Battle of Culloden – will be consigned to the realm of fiction. Calling Jeffery Archer, Ken Follett: either of you two gentlemen available for this task? DM

Photo: No supporters celebrate their win over the Yes campaign at the Royal Highland centre during the Scottish referendum in Edinburgh, Scotland, 19 September 2014. Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom early 19 September 2014, officials said, with almost all votes in the referendum counted. EPA/ANDY RAIN

For more, read:

• Scots Reject Independence From Britain in Historic Vote at the New York Times;

• Scots reject independence in historic vote at the AP;

• Scotland, the land of the Brave and the Free. Or Foolish? At Daily Maverick;

• Scots vote on independence, United Kingdom’s fate on knife-edge at Reuters;

• Here’s why Scotch distillers are jittery about an independent Scotland

• They helped create the bagpipe-and-kilt myth, but they really love the crown at the Washington Post;

• Ten ways the Scottish referendum is just like the American revolution – and three ways it isn’t at the Guardian;

• 9 big questions before Scotland’s big vote on independence at the Washington Post;

• Toil and Trouble in the United Kingdom: Why Scotland Won’t Be Europe’s Last Region to Seek Independence at the Brookings Institution website;

• The Huge Costs of Scotland Getting Small at the Peterson Institute for International Education.