Scotland

Thursday

Deborah Ross

Effie Gray can effie off

Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin to his teenage bride (he refused to consummate it), has a blissful cast. It stars Dakota Fanning, Ms Thompson herself, plus Julie Walters, David Suchet, Greg Wise, James Fox, Derek Jacobi and Robbie Coltrane. So it is period drama heaven, in this respect. It’s a cast you could watch all day, whatever, which is handy, as this is probably quite dull otherwise. It is adequate. It does the job. It gets us from A to B. But it feels as if it is missing something crucial, and I don’t just

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why everywhere should be more like Essex

Apart from the Wye Valley, where I grew up, there are only two places in Britain I’d consider living: Kent and Essex. Since Kent grabbed the ‘Garden of England’ moniker, it’s generally considered the posher of the two, but in reality the two counties are mirror images of each other: in the words of one travel writer, the Medway towns are ‘where you take your northern friends when they claim that southerners are soft’. In both places it is possible to drive through an idyllic medieval village and two miles later find yourself at a KFC drive-thru which is open until two in the morning (I like both). I now

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Cameron visits UN HQ, Scotland checks its bruises, and a Swede sells his submarine

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited New York for talks at the United Nations; he said Britain supported the American air strikes on the Islamic State. ‘These people want to kill us,’ Mr Cameron said on NBC news. Mr Cameron met President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in New York, the first such meeting since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Mr Cameron was caught by cameras in New York saying to Michael Bloomberg, its former mayor, that when he rang the Queen with the Scottish referendum result, ‘She purred down the line.’ Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, with effect from November. This

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Yes movement slowly moves through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief

No-one has died. No-one has been stabbed. Someone, I suppose, may have been punched. So let’s retain some sense of perspective as we consider and try to make sense of the last few days in Scotland. It is only day five. People deal with grief at different speeds. So, pace Ms Kubler-Ross, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many Yes voters are still in Denial. Many others have made it to Anger. Some have got as far as Bargaining. Most are certainly still in Depression. Only a few have reached Acceptance. True acceptance, I mean. There’s a lot of Yes we lost but if you look at it differently we

Monday

Tom Gallagher

The Scottish Church showed little statesmanship or common sense during the referendum

A few hours after the final result of the Scottish referendum was announced, I visited the cemetery at Cille Bharra on the Outer Hebridean island of Barra. It’s the burial place of Sir Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972). I wondered what this versatile character, World War I British spymaster, novelist, and Catholic convert whom the students at Glasgow university elected as their rector in 1931, would have made of the result. He believed that the Catholic faith had greatly influenced the nations’s long-term personality and felt that its soul had shrivelled with the retreat of that faith to remote outposts such as Barra, where he had his home in the 1930s. An

Saturday

James Forsyth

Have the Scottish Tories been detoxified?

The referendum campaign was a mixed experience for the Scottish Tories. On the one hand, it was a reminder of how much they are still hated in Scotland: End Tory rule forever, was one of the more frequently heard Nationalist battle cries. On the other, they had one of the campaign’s most effective advocates, Ruth Davidson and were accepted in as part of the cross party campaign. Indeed, it was telling that the Better Together campaign together rather than hiding Davidson away used her more and more as the campaign went on. In his Scotsman column today, the former Labour spin doctor John McTernan declares that ‘Ruth Davidson’s campaign has

Friday

Alex Massie

With malice toward none and with charity towards all, now the real work begins

Relief, actually. Not joy. A battle won is better than a battle lost but still an exhausting, bloody, business. There is no need to bayonet the wounded. It would, in any case, be grotesque to do so. Scotland voted and made, in my view, the right choice. The prudent choice. The bigger-hearted choice. But 45 per cent of my countrymen disagree. That’s something to be respected too. Moreover a good number of No voters did so reluctantly and not because they were necessarily persuaded by the case for Union but because they felt the Yes campaign had not proved its own argument beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s an important qualification. A reminder

The Spectator

David Cameron’s statement to the nation on devolution

Here’s the full text of the Prime Minister’s speech this morning in reaction to the ‘No’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum.  listen to ‘David Cameron’s statement on devolution’ on Audioboo The people of Scotland have spoken. It is a clear result. They have kept our country of four nations together. Like millions of other people, I am delighted. As I said during the campaign, it would have broken my heart to see our United Kingdom come to an end. And I know that sentiment was shared by people, not just across our country, but also around the world….because of what we’ve achieved together in the past and what we

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Reasons for feeling Scottish

Sometimes I say I’m Scottish, a claim often greeted with understandable derision. I was born in England, in Hertfordshire, went to school and university in England and, apart from some spells abroad as a journalist, have always lived and worked in England. I don’t even have much Scottish blood. My mother was English, from the West Country, and three of my four grandparents were English too. I have no trace of a Scottish accent. I don’t even know Scotland very well. I have never had a home there and have never lived there. As far as Alex Salmond is concerned, I might as well be Lithuanian. And yet, Scotland is

The Spectator

Scotland rejects independence – as it happened

No has won the referendum. Scotland won’t become independent, but it will get new devolved powers, David Cameron promised this morning. Follow the developments on the PM’s plans to change the constitution here. 08:13 The final result is in. Highland. Yes: 78,069 No: 87,739. That’s 47.1% to 52.9% on a turnout of 87.0% 07.10 am: What are these ‘further powers’ that Scotland – and indeed the rest of the UK – might be given? If we’re getting more powers I want telekinesis #indyref — Craig Rothney (@rothneychild) September 19, 2014 07.05 am: What happens next for the rest of the UK? Here’s what Isabel has to say: The Prime Minister will give his response to

John O'Neill

Scottish independence referendum results: what to expect

Coffee House is ready to cover the independence referendum results, and we’ll be bringing you news and analysis throughout the night. Isabel Hardman, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson will be blogging – and you can follow them on Twitter @FraserNelson, @IsabelHardman and @JGForsyth for immediate reaction. Polls close at 10 o’clock tonight – but anyone still queuing will be allowed to vote. There’s no exit poll so we won’t have an immediate estimate of the result. Votes will be counted in each of Scotland’s 32 council areas, and as each council’s total is checked and accepted by the Chief Counting Officer, Mary Pitcaithly, the local counting officers will be able to announce their result.

Peter Riddell

Even if it’s a No vote, the fall out will be very complicated

The most startling development over the past few days has not only been the narrowing of the polls but the consequential commitment of the three UK party leaders to Gordon Brown’s accelerated timetable for agreeing more devolution. Whether or not it convinces voters, this promise will have far-reaching effects not just for Scotland but also for the rest of the UK. The Brown plan envisages the setting out of options by the end of October, a month-long consultation before a White Paper on a plan by the end of November, and draft legislation in January. Leaving aside all the practical difficulties of meeting that timetable, there is no agreement on

The Spectator

Spectator writers on the good, the bad and the ugly moments of the IndyRef

James Forsyth Until that YouGov poll putting Yes ahead, the No camp had steered clear of making an emotional appeal. But in the aftermath of that poll, people—finally—began to speak about Britishness and their pride in it. At the Usher Hall in Edinburgh last Friday night, a sizable crowd had gathered to hear George Galloway, Danny Alexander, Brian Wilson and Professors MacDonald and Tomkins make the case for No. The audience listened attentively as the economic arguments were made. But it was when speakers began to talk about Britain and their pride in our history that the audience became really engaged. Alexander talked movingly about the people who had come

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Whoever wins Scotland’s referendum, the ‘yes’ side has emphatically won the campaign

As I left Edinburgh this morning, en route to Inverness, I passed about four ‘yes’ activists cheerily wishing me good morning, asking if I have voted and would I like a ‘yes’ sticker if I had. It worked: on the way to Waverley, people were wearing the ‘yes’ stickers with nary a ‘no’ to be seen. If I were a ‘no’ voter heading for the polling station, I may wonder if I was actually on the wrong side of history. That a party was happening in one room, and I was heading to another – but that there was still time to change my mind. You have to hand it

The Spectator

Podcast: Campaign errors, Scotland turns its back and Anglican wars over women bishops

Scotland goes to the polls today, but whichever way the vote goes, it’s clear who lost the campaign: ‘No’ was outsmarted at every stage of the referendum battle. But how was this allowed to happen? In this week’s podcast, James Forsyth discusses what went wrong with Hugo Rifkind and Alex Massie. If Scotland does become independent, does the rest of Britain owe them anything? And if they stay, should we be forever grateful? In his column this week, Matthew Parris suggests the Spectator’s cover story last week – in which we asked our readers to write to Scots to ask them to stay – was unnecessary. He hopes that there

Finlay Young

A No vote will create a schism between the voters of Scotland and its artists and writers

With the Scottish independence referendum drawing closer, two Newsweek Europe magazine correspondents and friends – Finlay Young (Scotsman), and Simon Akam (Englishman) – travelled the length of the United Kingdom together. They tried to get to the bottom of the independence debate, interviewing politicians, writers, artists, activists, and ‘ordinary’ citizens en route. In this excerpt from their unique dual-narrative 20,000 word account Scotsman Englishman, they meet two well-known Glasgow artists in favour of Yes, author Alasdair Gray and Belle & Sebastian songwriter Stuart Murdoch. Finlay Young (FY) – On this almighty Glasgow Wednesday, on the Yes side we will meet arguably Scotland’s greatest living writer, arguably Scotland’s finest living songwriter, arguably Scotland’s

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

The ‘no’ campaign’s problem was that it sounded like me

Journalistically speaking, it’s been a good year to be Scottish and Jewish. Had I been a Welsh Zoroastrian, say, I doubt I’d have had nearly so much to say. In recent months, obviously, it’s been the Scottish thing that has really taken off. I used to be marginally Scottish, irrelevantly Scottish; never realising that a period of being helpfully Scottish was just around the corner. I suppose it’s a bit like the presumptions that some bilingual people have, that other people must, must be able to speak other languages really. I think I just assumed that the rest of London’s media knew plenty about Scotland, but tended not to talk

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Santander’s secret: to conquer the world, stay like a small-town bank

Four years ago, I wrote that I knew no dark rumours about Santander, the rising force in UK high street banking, but that history taught me banks which expand rapidly and globally ‘always come unstuck in the end… partly because the challenge of risk control across such vast portfolios becomes impossible… Banks that have been driven by one powerful personality also tend to lose management grip, and start finding skeletons in cupboards, as the big man comes to the end of his tenure.’ The big man in question was third-generation chairman Emilio Botín — who died in post last week, aged 79. Santander is now Europe’s largest financial group, but

Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

Yes or no, I’ll never feel the same about the Scots

I doubt I’m alone among English readers of this magazine in having felt uncomfortable with our last issue. ‘Please stay with us’ was a plea I found faintly offensive to us English. Not only did it have a plaintive ring, but there seemed to be something grovelling, almost self-abasing, in the pitch. Why beg? A great many Scots have wanted to leave the Union; and by arranging a referendum Westminster has asked Scotland to make up her mind. Let her, then. When did England become a petitioner in this affair? ‘Please stay’ implied that the Scots were minded to go and we were pleading with them to relent of their

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Final polls put No ahead

The last YouGov poll of the campaign, which has a far larger than usual sample size, has No ahead 52-48. The last phone poll of the campaign, a Survation effort, has No up 53-47. So, the No campaign is ahead by a clear but small margin. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/3gFhn/index.html”] The Sun’s political editor Tom Newton Dunn reports that YouGov finds that men in Scotland favour independence 54 to 46 but women back the Union 57 to 43. Its numbers show that only 4 per cent of voters remain undecided. Interestingly, those from the rest of the UK who have moved to Scotland—those living the Union—are voting No by a 72 to 28 landslide.