The Court of Session’s landmark ruling that the UK Government was within its rights to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill should – and still could – be a reset moment for the Scottish Government.

For Humza Yousaf the decision is a lifeline, a pretext to pause and then ditch the divisive and obsessional legislation introduced by his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon, for whom it remains an emblem of the weird psychosis that appeared to grip her administration in its dog days, ahead of her resignation.

At least for now, Mr Yousaf appears unlikely and unwilling to grab that lifeline. Instead, he insists the judgment represents a dark day for devolution and that the 1998 settlement, upon which the Scottish Parliament was founded, is fundamentally flawed.

The First Minister has a short memory. There was a time when every other day was a dark day for devolution, when anyone who had ever spoken or campaigned against the idea of a separate parliament for Scotland felt vindicated.

Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the institution and it’s easy to forget – or, perhaps, to feign amnesia – about what a harum scarum, wild west time it was at the start, when everyone involved seemed to be making it up as they went along, and when no-one could be sure it would last the year, far less a quarter of a century.

I know because I was there. As a young political journalist, cutting my teeth as a member of the first group of Holyrood lobby correspondents, I recall how the excitement and idealism of the early days quickly turned to disillusionment and despair, as the new Scottish Executive, as it was then called, appeared to lurch from one existential crisis to another.

The ruling Labour administration had a strong incentive to make it work, to ensure that the bold new institution had gravity and credibility. It was their baby – “unfinished business” in the words of the late Labour leader John Smith, and the party’s constitutional coup de grace that would “kill nationalism stone dead”, according to George Robertson, another Scottish Labour grandee.

The SNP, for all its insistence that Holyrood was a grubby compromise when compared with the ultimate goal of a fully sovereign parliament in Edinburgh, also wanted it to be a success, as it would give the party an opportunity to show it could be effective in government.

Even the Scottish Conservatives – who continued to campaign against devolution ahead of the 1997 general election, warning that it was a dangerous, first step towards the break-up of the UK – accepted it as part of the country’s new political reality.

In the early days, it seemed that all of them had been wrong and that the only person to call it correctly was the antithetical Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, a one-man awkward squad who had warned, through his West Lothian Question, that the most significant impact of devolution would be to undermine democracy at Westminster.

Among the early warning signs of trouble in paradise was that none of Labour’s “big hitters” at Westminster, who had campaigned volubly for devolution – Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling, John Reid, George Robertson, Robin Cook – seemed in any hurry to be part of the institution they had helped to create.

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Only Donald Dewar was prepared to put his money where his mouth was, to forego the trappings of power in London to seek his political fortune north of the border.

At 62, Dewar’s best days were behind him and, while he had been an able and articulate voice in various roles at Westminster, including as shadow Secretary of State for Social Security and opposition chief whip, he appeared less sure footed in government, leading from the front.

Within months of taking office, he had to sack his chief of staff, John Rafferty, for lying to journalists and soon the crises started to queue up like London buses.

The following month another senior aide, Philip Chalmers, was forced to resign after being caught by police drunk in the family car with a prostitute in a red light district. Shortly afterwards, Mr Dewar’s chief spokesman David Whitton offered a grovelling apology after claiming falsely that Mr Rafferty had leaked the Chalmers story as revenge for his sacking.

Scotland had been promised a parliament free from the sleaze that had dogged Westminster. Instead, it now appeared mired in sleaze itself and Mr Dewar was fighting for his political life.

The gangly, patrician intellectual became involved in a turf war with new Scottish Secretary John Reid, a squat political street fighter – dubbed Tony Blair’s attack dog – over who was the most senior figure representing Scottish interests.

On policy there was little respite as ministers seemed slow to implement meaningful legislation. An early debate in the chamber was given over to a motion signalling the parliament’s disapproval of boxer Mike Tyson being granted a visa to enter the UK, despite having a rape conviction.

While voters eagerly awaited promised improvements in key areas now under direct Scottish control, like health and education, instead Mr Dewar’s administration became bogged down in an attempt to repeal Section 28, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools.

The legislation had been introduced in the early days of Thatcherism and appeared, then as now, to be insidious and vindictive. But in reality it was used rarely if ever and making reform a priority appeared to voters that ministers were most intent on grandstanding and virtue signalling.

Meanwhile, Mr Dewar’s early calculations that the cost of the new Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood, which he had taken a deeply personal interest in commissioning, soon appeared to be a disingenuous underestimate.

As Tony Blair jetted north, to lend moral support to his beleaguered Scottish colleague, Mr Dewar was hit with another bombshell when the original project manager for the Holyrood building claimed he was forced to quit after telling civil servants that the First Minister’s £50million price tag for the project was hopelessly low and then told to lie about it. The eventual cost of the building would be ten times Mr Dewar’s estimate.

Other scandals followed, including a meltdown at the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which left thousands of pupils with incorrect exam results, and a lobbying row in which Mr Reid’s son, who worked for a public relations firm, was recorded by an undercover reporter boasting of his connections to finance minister Jack McConnell. Both were cleared of wrongdoing at a subsequent enquiry.

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While Mr Dewar died prematurely and tragically, in October 2000, from a brain haemorrhage, as a result of a fall outside his official residence, Holyrood survived its early setbacks and continues to survive.

So, before Mr Yousaf signals the frailty of the institution, he would do well to take the long view and recognise its resilience.