BETTER Together was swept into the dustbin of history at 7.06am on September 19 last year.
Not simply because the No campaign had delivered its desired result, but because that was when David Cameron drove a stake through the Unionist cause.
In his dawn speech outside Number 10, the Prime Minister used the rejection of independence to advance his own narrow agenda on English votes for English laws (Evel).
It was a moment for calm statesmanship that exposed him as a bit of a spiv.
To placate right wing MPs demanding a counterweight to devolution (and future Barnett formula cuts, no doubt), he put party management squarely before nation.
As LibDem leader Tim Farron said yesterday: “He [Cameron] put short term before the long term, his party before his country and himself before the people. Shame on him.”
The consequences were swift, remarkable and far-reaching.
Appalled that he had gifted a new fight to the SNP, his Labour and LibDem allies on the No side immediately sheared off, all trace of a shared Unionist enterprise gone in an instant.
Profound distrust means there will be no Better Together reunion for any future Indyref2.
The SNP’s membership rose as rapidly as its poll lead, and the general election saw the Nationalists win 56 of Scotland’s 59 seats, with Labour and the LibDems utterly routed.
This week, Cameron introduced Evel by the backdoor route of a change to parliament’s standing orders, creating a two-tier system of MPs, with English members given an extra veto over laws the Speaker deems English-only.
Evel on its own will not fell the Union, especially as a future government could always scrap it.
But it is part of a pattern of disdain doing lasting damage to the Union.
This week the UK government faces another attitude test.
The threat to 1200 steel jobs in Scunthorpe, Motherwell and Cambuslang sees the Business Secretary meet European Commissioners in Brussels to discuss the dumping of cheap steel.
With 270 of those jobs in Scotland, the SNP government naturally wants to be represented.
So far the Business Secretary has yet to respond to this reasonable request.
However Cameron was happy to ignore Holyrood and send a Tory peer on behalf of the UK to fisheries talks last year in Brussels, despite two-thirds of UK fishing being in Scottish waters.
If the PM actually gives a damn about Scotland, a seat at the steel talks is the least he can do.
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