DEPENDING on who you talk to and their political leanings, the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government could do very well out of Brexit in terms of increasing the powers of Holyrood.

Conversely there are others who see a genuine threat to the devolution settlement itself, given the Tory Government’s previous “we know best” attitude to the repatriation of powers from Brussels.

That was before their election manifesto came out in which they promised to deliver “a significant increase in the decision-making power of each devolved administration” and to “ensure that as we leave the EU no new barriers to living and doing business within our own Union are created” – and there has been no U-turn on that promise, so far.

The Scottish Government’s position is to push for Holyrood to have greater powers over EU competences such as agriculture, fisheries, environ- mental protection, employment law and immigration. It’s a position that is definite, unlike that of the UK Government which is best described as vague. The landmark Gina Miller case saw the UK Supreme Court rule that the Scottish Parliament cannot veto Brexit or any settlement reached between the UK and EU, but the court notably accepted that devolution matters are “political” and therefore any issue involving devolution is for politicians, not judges, to resolve.

Which is why the General Election debacle for Prime Minister Theresa May has altered the calculations on how Brexit will affect the devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament, with the forthcoming Great Repeal Bill proving the crunch moment for relations between Westminster and Holyrood.

A soft Brexit could be a boon for the Scottish Parliament and Government. In a deal of any kind that sees Scotland retain membership of the European single market and the customs union, it might be for the Scottish Government to establish and maintain new relations directly with the EU, instead of having to go through Westminster as at present.

European regulations and laws which the Great Repeal Bill will incorporate into British legislation could be fully devolved to Holyrood from the outset. The European Court of Justice might also stay in overall charge of ruling on international trade and other disputes, which is good news for Scotland as our legal systems are very Euro-compliant.

All these and other possible positives have been made possible by the result of the General Election on June 8 and the effect it will have on the Great Repeal Bill, according to one of Scotland’s leading constitutional experts.

Professor Jo Shaw, Edinburgh University’s Salvesen Chair of European Institutions and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, told The National in February that the “real legislative battle” between the Scottish and Westminster Governments will start when the Great Repeal Bill comes before the UK Parliament, and she has not changed her mind.

Shaw said: “It’s extremely unclear in the White Paper how the Great Repeal Bill will respect the letter and particularly the spirit of devolution.

“It will definitely not be straight- forward – I just can’t see how it would ever be straightforward and it’s going to be very fraught between the two governments.”

The General Election has changed things, however. Shaw added: “We are in a different situation after the election. The electoral arithmetic has changed and there is not a simple Conservative majority to ram the Great Repeal Bill through the House of Commons and tell the Lords to do their worst, so it's much more complicated now. I don’t think there will be anything simple about these matters at all.”

The devolution issues will have to be resolved within the UK as devolution is here to stay, said Shaw, who added: “I would never say never, ever, but what I would say is that the situation is better for devolution after the election.

“If the Scottish Tories, for example, were to start selling devolution down the river at Westminster, they would find that would cost them heavily.

“Devolution is popular in Scotland and now there isn’t really the cap- acity to push through a cutting back of devolution as I feared there might be if there had been a big win for Theresa May in the General Election – as we know, there wasn’t, and we are in a different situation now.

“The Prime Minister needs to start talking to the other parties about these and other issues, but there has been no particular sign of that yet, though you never know.”