London, not Holyrood, is still calling the shots

IT'S quite an appropriate date to be writing this column, in the no-man's land between Christmas and Ne'erday, because events this week have marked out this usually politics-free time-zone as either the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end of the political union of the United Kingdom.

The pure bloody-mindedness of the current Westminster Government is doing more to make the case for Holyrood to have sovereign powers than a mere political party could hope to match. By refusing to recognise the SNP's logic in trying to make the remedy fit the crime, and sweeping aside public opinion in Scotland, Gordon Brown's new, loyal and hand-picked Cabinet has given the game away.

Have a guess – what's the priority in relation to Scotland for Gordon's ministerial term? Since the team refuses to consider going for the ball in preference to bringing down the man, it's not unreasonable for us to complain that Westminster doesn't give a fig for our political and social priorities. This is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the Home Secretary's refusal to discuss with the Scottish Justice Secretary the best way to tackle airgun possession and the crimes that have resulted in three lost lives and hundreds of injuries, many of them serious, in the nine years of Holyrood's existence.

Kenny MacAskill, former spirited campaigner, now diplomat supreme, approached the Home Office with the reasonable proposition that if Westminster couldn't legislate for a ban on the ownership of air guns, then Holyrood was willing and able to do so, Strictly speaking, the question of gun licensing is reserved to Westminster, but as I heard the chairman of the body that planned Holyrood admit in a radio interview, there's no overriding reason why that should be the case. Canon Kenyon Wright was up-front in saying that after two parliaments, we can see what would improve the governance of Scotland, and that the right to have a change in gun law in Scotland, because our experience, not political theory or party policy, dictates that it should. To rub salt in the wound, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also ignored the petition to change the law, signed by 80,000 Scots.

According to her master's voice, that's not the sort of legislation needed in England, and since she and Gordon think it necessary to have the same legislation on both sides of the Border, our urgent need in Scotland will have to wait until England is judged to have the same requirement for a ban on airguns.

And there, in a nutshell, is the crystal-clear logic argued by devolutionists, Scottish solutions to Scottish problems. But it's also the road-block identified by devolutionary sceptics like myself: the devolutionist theory is constructed not on power or watertight legalities, it is dependent on the goodwill of the superior parliament, Westminster, to the devolved parliament, Holyrood.

We learned only this week that there's precious little goodwill towards Holyrood at Cabinet level in Westminster. It has emerged that Gordon Brown and Alex Salmond haven't spoken to each other "for weeks". For the devolution settlement we have to work effectively there's a requirement for the two governments, in Edinburgh and Westminster, to keep each other informed. Alex Salmond claims to have made every attempt to contact the Prime Minister in Downing Street, but his phone calls have not been returned.

It would be tempting to excuse this dereliction of duty on the part of Gordon Brown by reiterating his loyalty to Labour and his distaste for the Scottish National Party, but there's more to it than that.

Leaving aside Alex Salmond's legitimacy, conferred at the ballot box in comparison to the greatness that was thrust upon Gordon Brown, Jack McConnell, a Labour Party First Minister, also had to admit in the dying days of his administration that the meetings between Ministers from Westminster and Holyrood were very few and far between . . . and in some cases not at all.

Westminster still ruled, but it was not OK. At the time of the G8 summit there were some very high-handed decisions taken about the venue, the right of Scots to protest in Scotland, and the all important question of who should bear the costs of the event. Jack McConnell had to fight his way into the centre of the decision- making on an event that portrayed an image of Scotland to the whole world.

But the argument then for Westminster calling the shots was a variation of today's argument against the Scottish Parliament deciding on changes to the law on the ownership and use of airguns. According to the Home Secretary, it just wouldn't be feasible to have different laws on either side of the Border. She appears blithely unaware of the fact that Scots criminal law differs from that in England in several important respects, yet both operate inside a single state – the United Kingdom.

She says criminals would take advantage of a difference in the law on airguns. Did she research the different laws operating on either side of the Irish border, delineating two countries with different legal systems in one island, or the situation in the peninsula shared by Norway and Sweden, two countries, one a member of the EU, the other not?

This week may have seemed to be about airgun policy.

It was actually about the very nature of how we govern Scotland and relate to the governance of the UK. After the holidays, Scots can decide whether to duck and dive on the width and depth of the powers they need to do what they must – or they can start thinking about having sovereign power.