Labour came into office promising change, but what has certainly not changed is Westminster's domineering approach to the Scottish Parliament and its contempt for the devolution settlement.

Before winning the recent Westminster general election, Keir Starmer promised to reset the relationship between Westminster and the devolved administrations following years of Conservative arrogant patrician high-handedness, and the imposition of British Government policies that have a direct impact on devolved matters without British Government ministers bothering to consult or even inform their counterparts in Scotland.

True to his word, Starmer has indeed reset the relationship between Westminster and Holyrood. He has replaced Conservative arrogant patrician high-handedness with Labour arrogant patrician high-handedness, which is totally different because Labour is the people's party and represents the people.

It particularly represents the people who run private health care companies and the financial service industry, the people whom Rachel Reeves proudly told had their fingers all over Labour's election manifesto.

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The Tories had been assaulting and undermining the devolution settlement for years, and now it's the turn of the Labour Party to take up the cudgel and batter the devolution settlement into submission.

Gordon Brown's Vow and his promise of the closest thing possible to federalism is a distant bitter memory.

Labour is taking a leaf out of the Tories' anti-devolution playbook and is planning to introduce new measures which will allow the Westminster Government to by-pass Holyrood while allowing it to pretend that it has left the devolution settlement intact as it has not actually removed any powers from the Scottish Parliament.

However, Westminster does not need to remove powers from the Scottish Parliament when it can award itself new powers to deal directly with local authorities and ignore the Scottish Government entirely. This con trick is what it pleases the Labour Party to brand as "strengthening and broadening" devolution. It is no such thing, it is a Westminster power grab.

The Sunday Mail reported this weekend that the Labour government is planning new legislation to expand the powers of the Scotland Office by turning it into a "spending department". The plan will reportedly be voted on by MPs around the time of the Budget on October 30. The plan would allow Chancellor Rachel Reeves to allocate a reported £150 million to Scotland Secretary Ian Murray to pass to local authorities for measures to combat poverty.

Scottish Finance Secretary Shona Robison criticised the reported plan asking why if there is £150 million in extra funding this could not have been passed directly to the Scottish Government Speaking on BBC Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, the Finance Secretary said the £150m could have been used to avoid means-testing the Winter Fuel Payment north of the border.

She added Murray would be bypassing Holyrood if the plan suggested by the newspaper went ahead, and said: "If that is new money, there is definitely a question mark about why that money is not coming to the Scottish Government, given all of these funding pressures that we have."

For the Westminster parties, the devolution settlement was only ever a means to an end. For Labour the devolution had two main goals, the first of these was in the words of former Labour Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Robertson: "Kill [Scottish] nationalism stone dead."

The second was to provide the Labour Party with a bastion of power in Scotland while it was out of power in Westminster.

Devolution has failed to deliver these two key aims for the Labour Party. A desire for Scottish independence is alive and kicking irrespective of the electoral fortunes of the SNP, with half or more of the Scottish population wanting to see Scotland as an independent nation. It is no longer earth-shattering news when an opinion poll is published showing majority support for independence.

Opposition to independence enjoys majority support only amongst members of the older generations and even a considerable number of older people desire independence. Worryingly for opponents of independence, support for independence reaches overwhelming levels of support amongst younger generations, amongst whom independence is their settled will. The so-called Union is living on borrowed time.

Labour has been out of power in Holyrood for over a decade and a half, for most of the quarter-century history of the Scottish Parliament.

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Labour's goal now is to neuter the Scottish Parliament as much as possible. It has no intention of tackling the underlying cause of rising support for independence, which is widespread dissatisfaction with the democratic sclerosis of Westminster and the inability of any British Government to introduce meaningful reform.

So, instead, Labour like the Tories before it, intends to neutralise the ability of the Scottish Parliament to act on rising pro-independence sentiment in Scotland. It can do this by bypassing Holyrood and restoring direct rule by the back door.

Labour is immensely assisted in this by the current political weakness of the SNP. Starmer will be able to claim that a majority of Scotland's MPs support his plans as supposed proof of their democratic legitimacy.

If the SNP loses control of Holyrood in 2026 then Labour's neutralisation of the Scottish Parliament will move into overdrive.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

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