MANY people in Scotland will never have heard of David Lidington until this past week.

The Conservative MP for Aylesbury is also the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and is a former Lord Chancellor and Secretary for Justice as well as holding the rather pompous-sounding title of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. For people outwith the Westminster bubble, this means he administers the estates of the aforementioned Duchy, making him a sort of upper-crust rent collector.

So far, so 18th-century.

But Lidington is now infamous after some major filibustering during last week’s insultingly short 15-minute devolution debate on the Tory post-Brexit power grab, thus preventing any Scottish MP from any of the other parties having a say on their constituents’ or their own country’s future.

He was also the man who took David Mundell’s place on Monday for the emergency debate called at the request of the SNP to give the threat to devolution from Brexit just a little of the space and consideration it deserved.

Throughout the debate, Fluffy looked like the groom who’d been gazumped by his best man. It’s not exactly a vote of confidence from the PM when someone else is chosen to speak for you on your supposed one and only specialist subject.

Add in Mundell enraging almost the entire Scottish nation by openly confessing that his party do not see Scotland as being a partner in the UK, but merely a part of the UK, and it is clear his failings are one factor in the continuing surge in SNP membership as people see through the deception that is our so-called “partnership of equals”. Theresa May is thinking “damage limitation”.

It’s safer to keep him schtum than let him lose at the despatch box – better let everyone just think he is a fool rather than let him open his mouth and confirm it.

Not that the “Secretary-in-a-State” was going to add much to the debate anyway.During various Sunday TV appearances, he’d already admitted to there being no new proposals on offer to Scotland over the Brexit Bill. When he did finally stand up to speak on Monday, he argued he shouldn’t even have been there. It would be funny if there wasn’t so much at stake, but repeatedly breaking your promises to the country you are supposed to defend, talking Scotland down and dismantling the Holyrood settlement are no laughing matters.

I’ll come back to Mundell’s humiliating demotion, but if the Tories think it’s a good idea to replace the Secretary of State for Scotland with a toff who represents constituents in Aylesbury, they’ve either been sticking their head in the sand about the gathering storm in Scotland or they deliberately want to antagonise the Scots further.

The jeering, braying and mad gesticulating from the Tory benches during the emergency debate suggest it is the latter. All pretence is gone now and they’re not holding back. One normally and blessedly reticent Scottish Tory MP, Colin Clark, who so far, hasn’t had much to say for himself or his constituents, stood up to remark that Scotland had no more constitutional rights than Yorkshire or London. Thus spoke the man who, earlier this year along with three other Scottish Tories, signed Jacob Rees-Moog’s letter to the Prime Minister emphasising their support for a hard Brexit. Never mind that his constituency voted to Remain, or that Scotland voted to stay in the EU. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to get re-elected again. Fingers crossed.

I suppose we should be surprised that any Tories made the effort to turn up for the debate at all. Hardly any of their colleagues from constituencies outwith Scotland bothered to show their support during the main three-hour time slot.

And apart from the unedifying sight of the aforesaid Clark agreeing with statements made by Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray, it was pretty much a no-show from most of Labour too. They seem to have forgotten that their comrades in Scotland voted with the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Greens to protect Holyrood from this Brexit power grab. It’s almost as if they really don’t care. Richard Leonard must feel like a jilted lover.

I did notice, however, that a few more Scottish Tory MPs turned up for the emergency debate on Monday than had attended the Secretary of State for Scotland’s statement last Thursday in response to the SNP walkout the day before.

Only a handful graced the House with their presence that day to hear the panicked ramblings of a man who knows his days are numbered, whose every breath takes him closer to his P45.

Interestingly, a large group of Tory MPs who hadn’t been part of the emergency Sewel Convention debate made their weary way in towards the end to vote down the SNP motion alongside their Scottish Conservative colleagues.

They didn’t even try to hide their disdain for devolution, readily admitting they’d been biding their time watching a World Cup football match in the liquid dungeons around Westminster, happy to humiliate both the Scots and their colleague, Mundell, with their late appearance. Fluffy’s face said it all.

But all this is about so much more than one man and his failings or one party and their ingrained arrogance. It’s about consent versus contempt, partnership versus power grab, devolution versus damage to Holyrood. The condescension dripping from the wet-lipped elite in London as they salivate over their chance to undermine Scotland has been a sight to behold.

But this isn’t 1979, or 1999 or even 2014. The Scots are awake – we are watching and we don’t like what we see. Change is coming.