Westminster is not plotting to steal powers from Holyrood or roll back devolution, contrary to the campfire stories the Scottish establishment likes to scare itself with. In reality, neither Labour nor the Tories are interested in considering what impact Holyrood has had on the Union.
It’s peculiar, given both parties have self-interested reasons for rethinking the arrangements of devolution. Less than a decade into the experiment, the SNP had seized control of Holyrood and unilaterally renamed the Scottish executive ‘the Scottish government’. The party has used the Scottish government, and the UK civil servants who staff it, to plot both independence and a separate Scottish foreign policy, despite both matters being reserved to Westminster.
The SNP and its leader are politically vulnerable. There has never been a better time for the UK government to make a move
Westminster has responded with weakness, complacency and neglect, subsequently acquiescing to the renaming of the Scottish executive, giving the nationalists a referendum on independence, and not one but two tranches of extra powers.
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