Ask me about September 18, 2014 and chances are I’ll say something about how it’s still with us, written on our brains and in our veins; we were changed by it and we’ve still got the scars. I might also say something about the emotions we felt – still do – and tell you about the friend of mine who phoned me the night before the vote, unable to sleep, pacing her kitchen, tearful and worried, anxious that the country she cared about – the country she said had done so many good things – might be broken up.

There will be some of you – because I know some of you – who will mock a unionist shedding unionist tears and that’s fine: mockery is and always should be part of politics, even in the desperately sad cases in which a chest infection means you can’t tell the difference between a government agency and a charity. There’s also a British, maybe even a particularly Scottish, thing about tears: we’re uncomfortable about them being shed over politics and prefer them in the right places for the right reasons: funerals, football stadiums, and possibly, discreetly, at the end of Braveheart.

The discomfort over tears, or certain types of tears, is probably why Andy Burnham getting emotional and teary about the UK and the Union during his speech to the Labour conference this week hasn’t gone down well in some quarters and I understand it to some extent. Tears from the eyes of politicians raises the suspicion they might be doing it for effect. It’s also complicated by the fact that, no matter how much we think we’ve changed, we still expect leaders, especially male leaders, to be resilient and strong, and tears possibly hint at some kind of weakness.

The bit of the speech that seemed to get to Mr Burnham........

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