UNIONIST arithmetic says that 1 + 1 + 1 = 57. What the three Unionist MPs elected by Scotland vote for outweighs what the 56 SNP MPs vote for. This is what last year’s Better Together campaign meant by punching above our weight. That’s the only possible explanation for what is happening in Westminster.

We were warned before the election that the SNP was going to hold the UK to ransom, after we discover that it’s the UK parties which are holding Scotland to ransom.

The Unionist parties voted down an SNP amendment last week seeking to introduce the wide ranging and substantial devolution which the Unionist parties had promised in the last frantic days of the referendum campaign, and the Conservatives reneged on their promise in the notorious vow to make the Scottish Parliament permanent. The Vow lied, and the Smith Commission died.

The Unionists promised us these things in order to secure a No vote in the referendum, and having secured their No they wheeched the offer away. The Tories voted down the very first line in Gordie Broon’s Vow and the foundation of the Smith Commission agreement, to make the Scottish Parliament permanent. An SNP amendment sought to introduce into law the principle that Westminster could only abolish Holyrood after Scotland’s voters had given consent in a referendum, but Westminster said no.

It determined that it would reserve to itself the right to abolish the Scottish Parliament, irrespective of what the Scottish people want. It’s the principle, said Westminster, which thinks it’s too dangerous to allow the people the principle of democracy. If they’ve shown themselves to be untrustworthy on the very first line of their Vow, how can they be trusted to deliver the rest of it?

You’d think that treating the very first line in the vow as disposable would count as news in a media that prides itself on holding politicians to account – and hounds the SNP over every perceived misrepresentation of actualities that often only exist in the imagination of a journalist with an agenda.

But we were presented with the trashing of a core promise in a Unionist manifesto that was headline news for a week on BBC Scotland, yet Scotland’s public broadcaster doesn’t even see fit to mention it.

And with that the heart was ripped out of the Union.

Now we’re just waiting for the death message to make its way along the decaying spinal cord to the spongiform half-conscious brain. Westminster can’t say it wasn’t warned, Bad Vow Disease is invariably fatal.

This counts as a material change of circumstances. We’re no longer in the Union that we were told we were. The Union of the Vow is a myth.

That wasn’t the only Smith myth on offer. The new Scotland Office secretary has been taking honesty lessons from his predecessor. “It is a myth that Gordie Broon called for either federalism or Home Rule”, said Paddington Mundell during the debate, trying to create a new myth of his own.

Mundell may well try to deny what Gordie Broon said – but it was widely quoted and repeated on the same undevolved broadcaster which is now overlooking Mundell’s misrepresentation, just like it’s ignoring what’s happening with the Scotland Bill.

This was the second time within a few days that the Fluffy one has either been confused or attempted to dissemble, although to be fair those two possibilities are not mutually exclusive. He has claimed that there was no Scotland Office veto in legislation that says that the Scottish Government must consult with and get the permission of the Scotland Office before it can use certain powers. Which is another way of saying veto. But Fluffy thinks that it can’t be a veto unless the word veto is actually used and someone from the Scottish Office rushes into the chamber of the Scottish Parliament screaming NOoooooooo!

It’s Mundelly fundilimentalist, which is a peculiar form of literalism that is more usually associated with religious fundamentalists who say that the world is only 6000 years old and dinosaurs walked amongst human beings. Although when you look at the Conservative and Labour benches in the Commons you can see that they still do.

Watching the progress of the Scotland Bill was a dismal and depressive sight. Again and again, small, tiny steps towards a surer footed Union were laughed into irrelevance by the braying voices of a triumphalist Tory party that doesn’t need to care. Scotland, you’ll get what you are given and you’ll be grateful for it. The Smith Commission is what the Tories say it is, and the General Election in Scotland may just as well have never happened.

The Scottish people spoke, but they spoke to a deaf ear, a deadened mind, and a clenched fist that won’t let go of any power or control.

And what was Labour doing while all this was going on? It was pooling, sharing and abstaining. After screaming at us for months about the evils of FFA they did sweet FA. Abstention is the new opposition, like a sulking teenager which has taken to its bedroom screaming that it’s all unfair, Labour can’t be bothered voting against the Tories.

Another failure to do the job that they were elected to do handed a victory to the Tory Government. Davie Cameron wants to suspend the purdah period during the last days of the EU referendum. This is supposed to prevent the government introducing material changes to any offers in the final days of the vote – when postal voting has already begun and many people will have already cast their ballot. Mind you, the existence of the purdah period didn’t stop them from making the Vow during the last days of the Scottish referendum.

The SNP voted to block the Government’s move, as did a group of Tory back bench rebels. If Labour had bothered to turn up, the Government would have lost this crucial vote, but Labour was too busy sitting in the Commons’ bars and tearooms harrumphing to itself.

We have a Government only a tiny minority of Scots voted for, and an official Opposition scarcely any more voted for –and it can’t be bothered turning up to oppose. Our politics have gone beyond satire and are now a tragedy, one which will end with the death of the UK.