Celtic’s board has lost its mandate — and its legitimacy.

Every regime that has ever held power believes that it is forever. Even in democracies, parties in office operate under the assumption that if they can tilt the table just enough while they’re in charge, they’ll be returned to power again and again.

Gordon Brown famously cut his deal with Tony Blair on that basis. Before they had even won one election, Brown was talking about the end of the second term. Blair told him it was madness to be thinking like that when they had yet to take power. Brown’s reply was confident: Labour would be in power for a generation.

This belief is even more ingrained when you are essentially unchallenged. To outsiders your regime looks impenetrable. But nothing lasts forever. In the end even the harshest systems are swept away. Only in dystopian fiction like Orwell’s 1984 can a small group rule indefinitely without paying heed to the outside world.

Ask any journalist in Scotland what chance Celtic fans have of seeing off the current board of directors and they will tell you: somewhere between slim and none.

What have I said about the Scottish media time and again? They are as lacking in imagination as this Celtic board. They misunderstand historical trends. They believe power lies in shares, in money, in the strength those things supposedly give a leader. History proves otherwise. None of it matters without legitimacy.

Any leadership needs a governing mandate, one way or another.

In a dictatorship it comes from the ruling class and the military. In Russia, they call the men around Putin the siloviki — the men of power. Rome had the Palatini, the inner court of the empire, and the Praetorians — on the surface the emperor’s bodyguards, but in reality, kingmakers who decided who ruled and who died.

Legitimacy comes in many forms, but you must satisfy the people around you. Even in the most repressive regimes you are answerable to somebody, and you are only legitimate for as long as you take their needs into account.

In a democracy, legitimacy comes from the voters.

It manifests in public opinion and in election results. That is why governments do hard and fast U-turns on the basis of polling data. It is why Labour is in such a cold sweat right now, especially after the resignation of Angela Rayner.

The Celtic board has operated for years under the mistaken belief that its mandate comes from the AGM and re-election year after year. It does not.

That is a group of well-heeled friends voting for themselves. It confers no legitimacy. For these people, legitimacy comes from something else: being seen to put the club first, being seen to act in Celtic’s best interests, being seen to have a plan, a strategy, a vision with clearly identified goals and a blueprint to achieve them.

It comes from the songs sung in the stands. The banners. The ability of a board member to ride the subway with the ordinary fans without being scorned by them.

Some think it comes from the numbers buying tickets.

Yet that metric is deceptive, because the board believes that as long as season tickets sell out, fans are content. Wrong. Fans want to watch their team. That is not an expression of satisfaction with how the team is funded or how the club is run.

The Romans thought the same with their bread and circuses. But even while the plebeians cheered, imperial dynasties toppled and fell.

When legitimacy is gone, all the walls come tumbling down.

Over 400 fan organisations — supporters’ buses, fan media, and now the Celtic Supporters Association itself — have expressed their view on this board, and it damns them. It strips them of their mandate. It strips them of legitimacy.

In truth, those things expired long before the events of the weekend.

We recognise this moment. That’s the key thing. Renewal comes from recognising that change isn’t optional, it’s inevitable. It isn’t that it must come — it will come. Why were we so sure before? Why are we so sure now?

Because this board can no longer claim any right to sit in those seats.

Yes, they have power, and they can exercise that power if they so choose.

But power without legitimacy is already half-lost. It is clinging on by brute force.

Without a mandate, leaders have no moral basis on which to exercise power.

And if they do they are only delaying the inevitable and inflicting further harm on the very thing they are supposed to safeguard. If they love Celtic as much as they claim, they would not do that. But they wouldn’t have done some of the other things they’ve done this summer, like the attack on Rodgers they made at the weekend.

They can persist with the strategy as they like, but that strategy has nothing to underpin it now. There is no broad base of opinion in favour of it. It runs counter to the wishes of virtually the whole fan base.

When those in the media confidently claim that we cannot shift them, they are correct in a narrow sense because the board can decide to ignore us. All of us. The whole support. They can turn this into a trial of strength.

But our strength flows directly from our love for this club and our determination to see it renewed and restored. Spread sheets, data points, self interest and fear will never be able to withstand a force built from that.

They can proceed down the path they are currently on for as long as they can hold it together, but that kind of reactionary thinking breeds more resentment. Every act of theirs which sets its face against us only deepens our anger and strengthens our resolve.

They have no legitimacy. It is just as simple as that.

They can recognise this moment for what it is. A motion of no confidence is not a statement that says “you have a chance to change course.” It is a statement that says “pack your bags — you’re done.” It’s already over.

For the Celtic board, the Rubicon has been crossed. There is no going back. Every moment they stay in those seats is an embarrassment. Every moment they dig in with their fingernails, the harsher the verdict of history will be.

If they agree now to a phased transition of power, to renewal, to a new plan, then supporters can see their way to allowing that to happen. If they insist on ignoring the clearly expressed wishes of the vast majority of the fans, they’ll meet a different end and will depart in shame, with their reputations in ruins.

When an executive board acts directly against the best interests of the company it represents, it is finished.

It is the same as a government betraying the best interests of the country it is supposed to rule over.

History has a word for that: treason.

It is one of the few things it never forgives.

We don’t care if some of them have convinced themselves that depriving Rodgers of funds, depriving Rodgers of players, depriving the team of what it needed was somehow necessary. It was an act against Celtic’s best interests. Their mandate was gone the day they made that choice. Their legitimacy was gone the day they put it into effect.

They have ceased to govern for us. They have been governing for themselves. They have mistaken their own good for the greater good of Celtic, and whether they recognise this or not they cannot continue to govern legitimately once that line has been crossed.

That is the simple fact of it.

“When the fall is all there is,” Eleanor of Aquitaine reminds us in The Lion in Winter, “it matters.” For this Celtic board, winter has come.

The fall is all there is now. They can decide how they go.

But one way or another, they are gone.