A storm’s a-brewin’. The very fabric of this united kingdom is tearing at the edges, thanks to the latest blow to the devolution settlement. It’s hard to believe the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of those involved, the desperate lengths they will go to in order to get their own way.

Theresa May is being perfectly reasonable, of course. She has a mandate for her policies from the voters of England, and they have decided that grammar schools must be reintroduced throughout the whole of the UK, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Yet astonishingly, Nicola Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones and Arlene Foster have unanimously insisted that education is a devolved issue and that therefore the devolved administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast must have the freedom to pursue their own policies.

Outrageous. Undemocratic. Brinkmanship.

Okay, so that didn’t happen. But something very similar is happening with Brexit right now.

Before that, though, let’s go back a few years – to 1997, in fact, and the dawn of New Labour and the publication of the White Paper, “Scotland’s Parliament”. Designed and promoted by the new Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, the paper carefully listed all the matters that, post-devolution, would be reserved to the UK parliament. Among these areas were international treaties and foreign affairs, including the UK’s relationship with the EU.

It was all crystal clear. No one demurred from the principle that as long as Scotland remained in the UK, there would be an agreed dividing line between reserved matters (the responsibility of the UK parliament acting on behalf of everyone) and devolved matters (the responsibility of devolved ministers acting on behalf of voters living in those areas).

Such was the consensus over this new arrangement that Labour and the SNP campaigned together for a double Yes vote in the pre-legislative referendum on devolution in September 1997. The new constitutional furniture was overwhelmingly approved by Scots (and very narrowly by the Welsh; Northern Ireland has a somewhat different devolution history). And 17 years later, a clear majority of Scots, in another referendum, rejected independence in favour of continuing with UK governance on reserved issues.

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Those who campaigned long and hard for devolution, and many who have since come round to the idea, are understandably very protective of the devolved parliaments and assemblies. That is particularly true of Holyrood. Whenever the UK government has sought to legislate on a devolved matter, it has only ever done so at the express request and agreement of the Scottish Parliament (civil partnerships and the Proceeds of Crime Act being two such occasions).

Thus a robust convention has emerged that each parliament – Westminster and Holyrood – stays out of each other’s business. Until now.

The views of the 55 per cent of Scots who voted to continue the Act of Union between Scotland and the rest of the UK are now to be dismissed. As are the views of the 74 per cent of Scots who voted in 1997 in support of the White Paper, with its clear and unambiguous delineation of reserved and devolved matters. Now, following June’s EU referendum – a decision that could only have been taken by the whole of the UK – Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is insisting that the Scottish Parliament must have a veto over Brexit – in other words, over reserved matters as well as devolved ones.

The Institute for Government, a think tank, has today also waded into the row with a portentous and pretentious briefing paper, Four Nation Brexit. Although the UK had the legal and constitutional right to negotiate Brexit without the explicit consent of the devolved administrations (a generous concession, I’m sure we can all agree) such a course of action would “run contrary to convention and to the spirit of devolution, which recognises the right of the three devolved nations to determine their own form of government.”

Which displays a pretty shallow understanding and experience of devolution. One of the core elements, the foundation, of devolution is the separation of devolved and reserved powers and the respect for the right to wield those powers that must be maintained by each of the players. The Trident submarine base is physically based in Scotland, despite nearly half of Scottish voters supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament. But defence is reserved to the UK government, so that’s that.

A bizarre and paradoxical sense of victimhood has been fostered in the devolved nations since Dewar published his White Paper nearly 20 years ago. The institutions, while growing more confident about their own powers and how to use them, and constantly demanding more powers on top of them, have at the same time become defensive and bitter about the UK government having any role at all in the lives of their citizens. Yet it was those citizens who expressly voted (twice, in Scotland’s case) for that to be the case.

Theresa May, the UK government and parliament at Westminster are legally and constitutionally obliged, by acts of parliament, to take the final decisions as to what shape Brexit should take. And there is no legal or constitutional reason to allow any of the devolved administrations a veto over it.

Those who say otherwise might believe they’re defending the integrity of the devolution settlement; in fact they’re undermining it. But then, perhaps that’s their aim.