BY-ELECTION lessons aren’t learnt in the first twenty four hours. Like earthquakes, it takes time to assess the damage.

What is certain, however, is that the LibDems will not be forming a government after the next UK election, nor is Labour completely finished because their vote was inevitably squeezed in a classic two-horse race. The Tories, forbye, remain a formidable electoral force in England even if, like the buffalo on the American plains, their great herds are only a distant memory in Scotland.

Nonetheless the voters of North Shropshire have sent a resounding message to the current shambolic and crooked inhabitant of No 10. What is much less clear is if Johnson will hear and heed it.

READ MORE: What does North Shropshire mean for Boris Johnson, the SNP and independence?

Of course the message for Scotland has a sharper dimension. It is high time we stopped relying on the vagaries of English constituency votes to determine our national future. Covid, whilst of necessity postponing the moment of decision, has made the choice ever more stark. No country can accept being unable to implement its own decisions on matters of life and death because it is being deliberately kept short of the necessary resources. Nor can it accept a situation in which such insufferable arrogance is brazenly and aggressively defended by some of its own elected representatives.

There is a huge contrast between such a sham partnership – money being withheld, lied about and point-blank refused by one partner from the other – and the assistance that Ireland has had within the real partnership of the European Union.

For example just two weeks ago the European Commission allocated almost a billion euros from its Brexit adjustment reserve to Ireland to assist it meeting costs incurred as a result of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Ireland is fully able to make its own decisions about its own priorities – during, before and after any crisis and on every other occasion – because it is a sovereign state that willingly pools parts of that sovereignty in exchange for mutual benefit.

In other words it lives in the real and modern world, whilst Scotland is forced to inhabit a dismal past, dependent on a backward-looking and politically unsympathetic neighbour – mired in a relationship in which its voice is usually ignored, its decision-making severely curtailed and moreover where any existing arrangements, inadequate as they are, can be set at nought without consultation or agreement.

READ MORE: Is Alex Cole-Hamilton's 'new hope' for LibDems just the same old delusion?

Ireland is not a perfect country or society, but its success is notable, particularly when contrasted to the state we are in and the problems we face. With an elected seat on the UN Security Council, a hugely strong and active diaspora, full decision-making participation in the EU, the benefits of international institutional representation, Irish representatives in key positions in regional and global organisations, a highly intelligent and principled elected head of state and a notable record in participation in peace-keeping, the country is well recognised and influential.

It is has modernised in an impressive way, moving forward with potentially divisive policies by means of national consensus and the development of effective participative democracy. Even the issue of Irish unity, long contested and frequently dangerous, is being tackled in a constructive manner by a very imaginative collaborative civic project, Ireland’s Future, as well as the official Irish Government Shared Island agenda.

Nor has it neglected the challenges of its past, with, for example, an absorbing series of programmes this week on the Irish Parliament’s TV Channel, re-creating the debates on the Anglo Irish Treaty which took place in the Dail exactly a hundred years ago, honestly assessing not just the positives of independence but also the tragic difficulties that followed for a time.

Some used to say that, speaking of natural resources, the contrast between Scotland and Ireland was whilst they had made so much of so little, we had made so little of so much. The key difference of course is control – Ireland controls its destiny, making decisions based on its own interests. We do not control ours, because decisions are forced on us and always made in the best interests of the larger part of the Union and, increasingly, to benefit the private concerns of those who represent it.

Irish people and politicians look warmly at Scotland, but they also know that their strategic interests lie with ensuring good relationships across all these islands. That is as it should be – and will be for Scotland too when independent.

We are going to need, and should welcome, close relations with all our neighbours, arising out of geography, history and cultures, examples of which can be found wherever you look.

But for many of us the relationship with Ireland has a particularly precious nature because of the principles that underpin it and the ambitions that drive it on. It is also demonstrated by some very special links, one of which sits in the Library of Trinity College in Dublin.

That is the glorious manuscript of the Book of Kells which was likely produced on the little Hebridean island of Iona 1200 years ago, perhaps in commemoration of the death of that great Irishman, Columba, some two centuries before.

He and the connection that he makes with their history is why so many Irish men and women, including Irish Presidents, have over the years made their way to Eilean I to experience that extraordinary place where, as the late Lord Macleod (who founded the Iona community) observed, the barrier between the physical and the spiritual seems so thin.

By-elections come and go, but deep familial friendships such as that between Scotland and Ireland go on for ever. Nations must learn from them, just as politicians must learn from the verdict of the people.

North Shropshire proves, yet again, that Scottish independence is essential.

Ireland proves that Scottish independence will work.