Having just destroyed the devolution settlement, Nebulous Theresa makes bizarre claim that it would be unthinkable for Westminster to destroy the devolution settlement

Theresa May has got some nerve.  I know that as statements of the obvious go, that's right up there with "the Pope is a Catholic" and "Rory Stewart is from The Middleland", but sometimes it just needs to be said all the same.  Her latest wheeze, intended to shame her own MPs into backing her God-awful Brexit deal, must rank as some kind of new high watermark in her relentless attempts to perfect the art of hypocrisy -

"Imagine if an anti-devolution House of Commons had said to the people of Scotland or Wales that despite voting in favour of a devolved legislature, Parliament knew better and would overrule them. Or else force them to vote again."

Luckily we don't have to imagine such an extraordinary state of affairs. In a referendum held in March 1979, the people of Scotland voted in favour of a devolved legislature by 52% to 48% - EXACTLY the same margin by which the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June 2016.  A Conservative-dominated, anti-devolution parliament under Margaret Thatcher decided it knew better than the people of Scotland, and overruled them.  No devolved legislature was set up - an act of utter, contemptuous defiance of a democratic referendum result.

Even the Labour party under Tony Blair insisted that Scotland couldn't have the legislature it had already voted for without being forced to vote on the subject again.  And that opportunity wasn't provided until some eighteen-and-a-half years after the first referendum result had been ignored. This time, Scotland voted by an overwhelming margin of 74% to 26% in favour of a devolved legislature that would have exclusive control over a range of policy areas such as agriculture and fisheries.

But two decades later, a Conservative-dominated, anti-devolution parliament under Theresa May decided it knew better than the people of Scotland, and overruled them.  Powers that the people had voted to give to the Scottish Parliament were taken back to Westminster without consent, driving a coach and horses through the democratic referendum result of 1997.  The Tories' cynicism was so overwhelming that they even legislated to retrospectively remove the Scottish Parliament's power to pass a bill it had only just passed.

In a nutshell, there have been two referendums in Scotland on devolution, and the results of both have been overturned either in whole or in part by the Westminster parliament.  What exactly is your point here, Theresa?

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I'm coming round to the idea that yesterday's story about a possible parliamentary "coup" may have just been misinformation emanating from the Downing Street camp, intended to spook Brexiteers into backing the May deal.  That theory is certainly consistent with the current spin about "no Brexit being more likely than No Deal" - the calculation seems to be that if anyone saves May's bacon, it'll be Brexiteers rather than Remainers.

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