REMEMBER when Brexit was to herald the very end of devolution, with those evil Tories rolling back the years of devolved power, taking back control of all manner of matters that were properly, rightfully, legally, Scotland’s? Senior SNP ministers were beside themselves, screeching about this. There was a Tory power-grab afoot, they yelled.

Whatever happened to all that? You will not have noticed, because it was reported precisely nowhere, but in December UK ministers announced that the statutory provision at the heart of the power-grab claims – a provision that has never in fact been used – will lapse later this week and will be repealed.

Thus ends the world’s most stage-managed constitutional crisis. Or, rather, thus lies exposed the hyperbolic and outlandish SNP claim for what it always was: grievance hunting on steroids (or, as a colleague put it to me yesterday, “bollocks from the beginning”).

Let’s recap. Brexit did pose profound difficulties for devolution – there is no doubt about that. When devolution was created it occurred to no-one that the UK (or any part of it) would cease to be in the European Union.

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Thus, no thought was given to the issue of whether powers over what we now call the internal market – regulatory powers over trade in goods and services – should be reserved to Westminster or devolved to Holyrood. It didn’t matter, because the reality was that such powers were exercised for us by the EU institutions in Brussels and, of course, all parts of the UK were bound by the same, Europe-wide, law of the single market.

When it came to Brexit, however, these powers would be repatriated. We would assume our own control over trade, and over the market regulation of goods and services. But who is this “we”? The basis on which the law of devolution is founded is that all powers not expressly reserved to Westminster are devolved. Because powers over the internal market were never reserved, it must follow, claimed the Scottish Government, that they are devolved.

Not so fast, counter-claimed London. Since the Act of Union itself we have never had substantively different trading rules in Scotland and England – indeed, the whole point of Union was to establish Great Britain as a single trading area (you might call it a common market). Plainly, UK ministers pointed out, it would be contrary to the public interest for regulatory differences to start to emerge now between Scotland and England, potentially disrupting the integrity of the UK’s internal market.

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Thus, UK ministers proposed that a series of “common frameworks” should be negotiated and agreed between all four governments of the United Kingdom. These would establish – in every instance by common consent – the principles on which regulatory powers newly repatriated from Brussels would be exercised. If such powers were exercised according to a common framework, no risk would arise whereby regulatory differences could emerge, disrupting the ability of Scottish producers to market their goods in England, or vice versa.

This would not be easy – each of the four governments is run by a different party, after all, and trade policy can be as contentious as any other area of policy. As an insurance, therefore, UK ministers legislated in an Act of Parliament for a so-called “freezing power” to “hold” for the time being a newly repatriated regulatory power at Westminster, if it proved to be necessary.

They did not want to have to exercise such a power, they insisted, as they wanted common frameworks to fall into place so that its exercise would never be needed. For this they were pilloried by the SNP. It was this provision – this freezing power – enacted by Westminster without Holyrood’s consent, that was the power-grab the Nationalists screamed so loud about.

They never bothered to tell you that the freezing power was time-limited to two years after exit day (i.e., to the end of this month). And, surprise surprise, they haven’t bothered to tell you that all the common frameworks which UK ministers sought have now been agreed – fully 29 of them, at the last count. So you can be forgiven for not knowing that this great power-grab has (1) never been exercised, and (2) never now will be, and (3) is accordingly to be repealed.

Fine. So be it. That’s politics. But let’s not leave this little story without pausing over the one aspect of it which, to my mind, is by far its most important feature. On the quiet, over the last three years, nearly 30 different common frameworks have been negotiated and agreed by the various governments of the United Kingdom covering a huge array of different aspects of trade in goods and services. They range in subject-matter from animal health to food standards, from agricultural support to fisheries management, and from public health to public procurement.

That’s right: without anyone appearing to notice, the SNP in Edinburgh, Welsh Labour, the Northern Ireland executive, and those evil power-grabbing Tories in London have agreed, by common accord, the principles on which all these and many other aspects of internal market regulation will operate across the four nations of this country now that we have to deal with these matters for ourselves and not rely on Brussels to do it for us.

Remarkable, isn’t it? That co-operation and shared governance on which devolution relies – it actually delivers. It works! Well, it works for as long as nobody is looking.

Devolution is rather like an iceberg. The bit you can see is just for show. That’s the bit where you see politicians shouting at each other. The real business lies under the surface, further from the public gaze. That’s the bit where these same politicians quietly get on with the business of running the country, hoping that you won’t notice that the shouting and screaming was always just for effect.

Adam Tomkins is the John Millar Professor of Public Law at the University of Glasgow School of Law. He was a Conservative MSP for the Glasgow region from 2016 to 2021. Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.