The error being made by the London commentariat on devolution is to say it was intended as a political fix to counter nationalism, and to judge it on that basis.  

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They are mistaken. Devolution's aim was to make good a democratic deficit that allowed Scottish schooling, justice and health care to be run by Tory government ministers rejected by Scots at the ballot box. 

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Home rule for Scotland was Labour policy many decades before the SNP even existed as a political party.  It was one of Keir Hardie's demands as far back as the Mid-Lanark by-election in 1888.

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In the 1980s and early 1990s, the push within Labour for a Scottish Parliament was not encouraged by the party's most unionist elements. In fact they viciously opposed it.

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