Iraq overshadowed what went before, of course, but devolution is accepted as one of the successes of Tony Blair’s tenure as premier.

Certainly, as a former member of the Scottish press, the editor of this magazine finds it hard to believe that it is only a little over a decade since Scotland got its own parliament. The ‘first’ first minister, Donald Dewar, died not long after the Scottish parliament opened, and though his statue gazes quizzically down Glasgow’s Buchanan Street he already seems a figure from a bygone political age.

In the wake of millennial euphoria among the citizens of Scotland and Wales, however, has come many a reckoning; and the repercussions continue to be keenly felt by lawyers. As we report this week, in Wales a referendum in March could see more powers devolved to the Welsh Assembly, adding to a body of opinion which asserts that in certain respects Wales is slowly developing a distinct legal personality.

Scotland, of course, already had a distinct legal personality, but it’s hardly business as usual there either. The Law Society of Scotland reached an accommodation over alternative business structures; but an SNP government was never likely to replicate Clementi and indeed it hasn’t. This is one oft-forgotten fact about devolution; it is one long logistical headache. Like democracy itself, in fact.