The first five words of “The Vow” – the solemn pledge made by all three UK party leaders on the eve of the independence referendum – are “The Scottish Parliament is permanent”. This is what happened in the House of Commons this evening when the UK government was asked to make good on that pledge.

Amendment 58, proposed by the SNP and backed by Labour, was actually a modest concession. It provided a way by which Westminster COULD abolish the Scottish Parliament, with its permission and subject to a referendum of the Scottish people.

The amendment contained no tricks or traps. Nothing was tacked onto it to which the UK government could object. It did only what it claimed to do.

(Link live at time of writing but will change. Subsequently it should be found here.)

It would have cost the Conservatives nothing to allow the amendment to pass. It commits them only to do what they said they would do, and in any event was a mere symbolic courtesy – in reality no government can bind the hands of its successor.

But the government voted it down anyway, pointlessly trashing the promise that David Cameron had signed his name to before the referendum.

Readers can, as ever, form their own conclusions.