BREXIT Day finally became a reality last week.

On Friday, we left everything behind. All the sisterhood, the common goals, the European institutions ...

It was also the day the UK left us behind.

On Brexit day the UK proved once again that its democracy is rotten. Scotland voted to stay.

We are Europeans. The European Union is the only union I can get behind, because describing the United Kingdom as a union of equals would be as true as saying Piers Morgan is a communist.

How on earth are Scotland’s interests and democracy being respected in all this? How are we meant to feel anything other than that they are leaving us in the mud?

I know yesterday was a tough day – it marked the end of three and a half years of lies, hate, hostility. But, as my mum used to say to me, if it doesn’t have a happy ending, it means the story hasn’t finished yet.

For us Scots the story is not over. We will be back in Brussels in no time, having pints with our European sisters, while England regrets the day they ever trusted the Tories.

The feelings you have this weekend, I want you to hold strong. Keep them. Keep the anger, the sadness the disappointment, so when indyref2 comes, you put those feelings in the ballot paper, and this time we will win!

Our rights have been violated for too long now. Brexit will be a catastrophe for us. The British Government is fully aware of that, but it’s not their jobs that are on the line.

MPs will be able to call a friend and start working in a private company, while you and I will have to do whatever we can to survive.

As a European immigrant, I love the EU. I am fully aware it has its flaws but the project and the idea of this sisterhood of nations represents, for me, something worth working for – instead of taking the easy way out and complaining from outside.

June Mummery, one of the Brexit Party MEPs, was moaning that now we are leaving we are left without any representation in Brussels. Can you believe that?

Do these people even know what they want? It is no surprise the UK at the moment is the joke of Europe. It looks more confused than Boris Johnson trying to get a curry delivered to Downing Street.

This weekend the world is looking at us as we bring down the EU flags from the offices of our institutions in what will one day be recognised as one of the biggest mistakes of modern democracy.

You know the worst part of this whole Brexit thing, is not the economy or that the Tories won. It is the people.

With Brexit, Mr Farage and Boris have opened the door to racism and xenophobia.

The other day at a bar with my friends, some guy came up to us and started harassing us – screaming and swearing just because we were immigrants. I have never felt more unwelcome.

But this is my home, I’m Scottish – it doesn’t matter what a paper says. I feel Scottish, I have sacrificed so much to be here, and I have worked very hard.

The whole process of the EU Settlement scheme was nerve-wracking. I kept pushing it and pushing it because I was scared my dream could be over at any time. I was terrified that someone could chose whether I was worthy enough to stay in this country or not, without knowing me.

IN Scotland, the story is not over, we can still fix this. We can get back in Europe as an independent country. Doesn’t it sound beautiful?

Scotland has proven it still very much wants to be a member of the EU. We voted overwhelmingly to remain, we are wise, we know Brexit is a shambles.

If England wants to leave, why doesn’t it leave by itself and thereby put only its own future at risk? Because England is the one that is too wee and too poor to stand on its own.

Don’t be fooled. It’s England that would not survive without the Union, not Scotland ...

It seems to me the main problem Scotland faces is that we have been manipulated for so long that we have come to believe our country wouldn’t be a successful nation outside this union. The reality is that Scotland needs the Union as much as an Eskimo needs a fridge.

Also don’t you think it ridiculous that there are 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK, but some Brexiteers thought it was legitimate to ask for £500,000 just to make Big Ben bong on Brexit night?

At 11pm on Friday I certainly felt I had absolutely nothing to celebrate.

For me that date will always represent a day of shame and bitterness of a failed nation. I hope when people come to realise the disaster that this will bring to our lives, they take the streets and protest.

Some of those living in England may even move to Scotland when we are independent and forging new bonds with our European friends.

After the Second World War, the Union of Europe was seen as an antidote to the dangerous extreme nationalism that destroyed so much of our continent. It was in fact Wiston Churchill, in a speech delivered in 1946 in Switzerland, who demanded a United States of Europe.

In a 2020 where extreme right-wing nationalism is on the rise, that idealism seems quite far from becoming a reality.

We are moving back in time to the dark old days. Poverty numbers keep going up, intolerance seems to be the main dish on this menu, and populist politicians are spreading their racism and hate across the continent.

Philosopher George Santayana’s famous warning that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” has rarely seemed more relevant. Here we are, more than 50 years later, listening to the same arguments about immigrants, gay people and women that fascists have spread all over the world.

IN countries such as Spain it never really went away ... it was just hiding behind a mask. Now it doesn’t need to hide anymore and can embrace its true nature.

Scotland, I urge you to stand up. Let’s leave all this mess soon.

We deserve better than this. We have a whole new chapter to write. We can choose our own future, we can build a new country, a country where everyone is welcome – where we don’t judge and hate, a country where children no longer need to go without food while the Government spends millions of pounds funding wars we shouldn’t be fighting instead of investing in their own people.

One of the many difference between Scotland and the United Kingdom is that our government does not want to run our country as if it was a business, but for the common good.

The Tories down in Westminster think only of how much profit they can make from the rest of us.

Let’s remind ourselves that the people who run the show in the UK are people who haven’t had to worry in their lives if they would be able to afford their groceries, people whose parents have given them everything they wanted and still had £32,000 spare to send them to a posh school.

Scotland, it’s time. Time for us to grow, to be bold and brave. Time for us to take our future into our hands and stop letting people decide for us.

When the time comes for indyref2 – whether it’s this year or later – vote Yes, for your future, for those who aren’t here anymore, for the ones that will come, let’s build our own country, because we can.

We are big enough, we are strong enough, we are rich enough. Goodbye European Union. Till we meet again.