FOR people who consider that they won a major victory in the Supreme Court, the English nationalist parties have been extremely nervous and jittery of late. They are not at all behaving like people who believe that they have inflicted a devastating blow to the aspirations of their opponents.

Rather, they are acting as though they have just poked a dozing bear with a very big stick and are stepping back, fearful of the reaction that their foolishness will provoke. This is because the more thoughtful among them realise that the court ruling has deprived them of one of their best weapons. Namely, being able to fob off Scottish dissatisfaction with the Westminster regime with the claim that Scotland is a member of a voluntary union of nations, a free partnership in which all member countries and their diverse political and cultural traditions are equally respected. The Supreme Court has ruled this to be a fiction. We are now told that, in the eyes of the British state, Scotland has only a theoretical right to independence but is deprived of any practical means of achieving it. It's rather like smashing a person's kneecaps and leaving them dependent on a wheelchair, but then insisting that they can still walk up a steep hill if they want to.

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The political fiction of a voluntary union was immensely useful to opponents of independence. It permitted them to pretend that by opposing Scottish independence they were not just merely opposing a particular constitutional settlement for Scotland, but that they stood in opposition to “nationalism”, not just Scottish nationalism, but nationalism in general. It also allowed them a convenient means of pretending that they stand for a Scotland which is in full control of its own destiny.

Instead, as we now see, they stand for a Scotland which is politically and constitutionally subordinated to England, which is by far the largest part of the UK and not subject to the same political constraints imposed on the smaller nations. England need not ask Scotland's permission if it ever wants to leave the UK, just as it did not require Scotland's permission to impose Brexit on all the other nations.

The British Government was desperate to maintain this fiction, aware as they were of its political usefulness. That's why the British Government was asking the Supreme Court not to make a ruling on the substance of the question put before it by the Scottish Government. But the court did make a ruling, and while the court did not give the answer that the Scottish Government had hoped for, it was an answer that exposed the lies and self-serving deceit of generations of politicians who had hitherto peddled the claim that they were Unionists opposed to nationalism. It's clear now that there is no union worthy of the name. There is only a unitary British state which is indistinguishable in practice from Greater England and in which the concerns of English nationalism are paramount.

The anti-independence parties have now fundamentally weakened their position and when the issue of Scottish independence does come to a public vote, as it most assuredly will, they will be forced to defend the political and constitutional subordination of Scotland and a devolved parliament which Westminster can overrule at will.

Awareness of this weakness explains why the Anglo-British nationalists have been even tetchier and more thin-skinned than usual of late. A major explosion of harrumphage has been caused by a throwaway quip during a private conversation involving a senior civil servant and one of his colleagues who had joked that part of his job title was a reference to breaking up the UK.

Yet another outbreak of victimhood seeking occurred after the First Minister's spin doctor accused the Anglo-British nationalist parties of “behaving like Donald Trump” with their refusal to accept that the Scottish Government possesses a democratic mandate to pursue an independence referendum. The spin doctor, Stuart Nicolson has now been reported to Holyrood authorities by the Scottish Tories, who believe that being accused of behaving like Donald Trump is a far worse sin than actually behaving like Donald Trump.

These are not the actions of confident and self-assured politicians who are confident that morality and the public are on their side. These are the actions of bullies whose true nature has been exposed.