SO now we know, or rather we have confirmation of what we knew all along. According to former Lib Dem cabinet minister David Laws, the one who had to resign for being a bit too liberal with his rent expenses claims, Prime Minister Davie Wide Boy said just a few days after the independence referendum that he didn’t care about Scotland. Well colour us all unsurprised, said Scotland’s yes voters en masse, followed shortly by don’t say we didn’t tell you so all along.

We don’t really need an admission from former government figures that the UK’s heid-bummer doesn’t care about Scotland. The not-giving-a-tossness of the UK government as far as Scotland is concerned has been evident from all their actions ever since the independence referendum ended and Labour MPs did a wee dance to celebrate what they fondly imagined was going to be their continuing trough snouting. Davie’s utter lack of concern for or interest in the well-being of Scotland was clear to all but the most self-deluded, so that would be most Unionist commentators then, the morning after the referendum when he stood up and announced to the world that the entire debate about Scotland’s place in the world had really been about England all along.

There’s been no shortage of confirmation ever since that the UK establishment cares as much about Scotland and her people as it does about the democratic rights of the Chagos Islanders. The Chagos Islanders were deported from their Indian island homes because the UK wanted to punch above its weight by granting the USA the islands to use as a naval base. And you can be pretty certain that if the MoD had wanted to evict Scottish people from their homes in order to further the military pretensions of the UK, they’d have done just that. Westminster’s view of Scotland is summed up by the island of Gruinard, which was out of bounds to the public for decades after the MoD used it as a testing ground for biological weapons and contaminated its soil with anthrax spores. Scotland is remote and expendable.

English votes for English laws was the Tories’ biological weapon against Scottish representation in Westminster. The ruling party of this so-called United Kingdom fought the last general election on a platform of denying that Scotland should have any say in the governance of the UK. After spending the independence referendum campaign assuring us we were equal partners and a valued part of the British family, they plastered England with posters and placards stirring up the fear of the rampaging Jocks. How dare Scottish representatives think that they could have any influence. It’s only Westminster which should have influence in Scotland, not the other way about.

We’ve seen the lack of care for Scotland in the Smith Commission and the Scotland Bill. Holyrood isn’t getting limited powers over income tax because that’s good for Scottish government. Holyrood isn’t getting control over wealth taxes or taxes on large corporations. It’s only getting partial control over the tax which most directly affects working people in their pay packets. And the reason for that is because the Unionist parties hoped to use it as a weapon against the SNP. What’s good for Scotland doesn’t enter into the equation.

Westminster’s approach to devolution and Scottish home rule has always been about whatever is in the short term interests of the Westminster parties. What ordinary Scots want doesn’t even register. We’re just mugs who can be lied to and fobbed off with vague promises that they have no intention of fulfilling. Westminster’s approach to Scottish devolution is: “If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.” We live in a country where the penalty for lying to a British government official is five years in jail, but when a British government official lies to us they get five more years in office.

It is a well known fact in psychological studies that no matter how many times a certain proposition is shown to be a lie, like the proposition that Westminster cares about Scotland, a certain percentage of the population will persist in its deluded belief that it’s the truth. In Scotland we call such people members of the Unionist parties. But then no one is going to cease to believe something, no matter how often or how comprehensively you disprove it, no matter what mountain of evidence to present to show that it’s factually incorrect and even physically impossible, when their job depends on believing it’s true.

All the promises made to Scotland by the Unionist parties during the independence referendum have fallen by the wayside one by one. Your pension isn’t safe after all, your job is at risk after all, your EU membership is up in the air after all. The Labour Party’s British parliamentary road to socialism is littered with the broken promises of the British state. The Tories’ respect agenda is a sick joke.

The Tories respect Scotland in much the same way that a mugger respects their victim. Real home rule remains a distant prospect. It’s not that we’re surprised that they’ve lied to us, we’re surprised that they still think we should listen to them. And when a Union is held together only by lies, no one is going to be surprised when it so easily falls apart.

Having smashed, ignored, or traduced every single promise that they made during the independence referendum, the hypocrites of Union still imagine that they have a moral high ground to stand on, but having told so many lies they have no right to complain if Scotland holds another referendum. If the Union isn’t keeping itself to its promises there is no reason why should Scotland be held to Alex Salmond’s once in a generation comment. If they don’t care, why should we?