Strange days. Here, in one corner of the sometimes-united kingdom, we have a first lord of the Treasury - Tony, to you - co-operating with the cops. Elsewhere, our new labouring Jack is discussing "persistent indiscipline" amongst juveniles. No irony intended, then.

How does it work? Nicola Sturgeon and the Nationalists would have us believe no child will ever again cheek a teacher come the dawn of national liberation. Jack, with his teaching qualification in very hard sums, wants us to know there is no problem, none whatever, with "the kids".

Meanwhile, a Prime Minister of Britain is answering very serious questions from the plods. The entire edifice of a political project crumbles before our eyes. This is important. But it isn't devolution.

One shouldn't conflate. This little column knows for a fact it has never been offered a single lousy peerage, far less a bus pass, far less a polite greeting from a spin-person. This column also knows a bit of argy-bargy over classroom behaviour is precisely - make that "exactly" - what one should expect from a devolved parliament doing its work.

None of this quite explained the odd mood hanging over Holyrood yesterday. They went through the motions. Sturgeon and Jack McConnell exchanged routine blows over children excluded from the learning machine and swapped rhetoric over education and employed words your columnist has forgotten how to spell. You sensed the thought bubbles, nevertheless. They said one very simple thing: is Blair in real, definitive trouble?

In a home-rule world, this should not matter much. In a real world, we should be discussing whether the Nats are more obnoxious than Labour in the race to blight young lives with their dumb, prescriptive ideas on schooling and exclusion.

We should, victims of teachers all, be asking about the purposes of education. Real stuff. Honest stuff. That wasn't how it was in Edinburgh yesterday, though. Bear with me: this is tricky, technically, and personally. I'm supposed to be filling 600 words on the topic of Jack's latest horrible tie, and Nicola's hair, and how one - such a laugh - did the other down in a set-piece exchange on weans' behaviour in schools. Can you be bothered? Me neither.

Watching our parliament, one thought came to mind. The British thing still matters. "Blair Interviewed. Again", said the 24-hour newscasts yesterday, over and over. If you could find some stray leftie columnist who was permitted to write something relevant to that effect, in a respectable newspaper, you might even turn that into a story. Or a fable.

You get me instead. Yesterday, Jack and Nicola gave us an exemplary version of democracy in action. I mean it. This double act is better than anything you will ever encounter on the banks of the Thames. They debate - and I'm not kidding - to a very high level. They honour Scotland weekly.

No-one cares.

Sturgeon is a finer student of political speech than any supposed leader of her supposed liberation cause. Jack is new-Labour-in-action: pathetic, but impressive with it. Yesterday, these Scots awaited news from London.

Here's the bit one is not supposed to express in the usual, clowning parliamentary sketch. What happens if Blair goes down? What happens should Scotland lose another governor-general?

We could always run our own affairs, of course. We could have a parliament, and stuff, and more stuff. Imagine that.

But if Blair goes down in black disgrace, and with him the British edifice, fun will follow. Then elections.

Then odds on Jack and his chances.

And larks, obviously.