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The great thing about the ‘new politics’ – or at least the new politics we have lately been privileged to endure here in Scotland – is that it’s just as fetid and grubby as the old politics it replaced. The band may change but the music remains the same. Consider the twin controversies swirling around the SNP. Neither, on its own, is enough to torpedo Nicola Sturgeon but, combined, they represent the largest challenge to her authority the First Minister has yet encountered. First there is the curious case of Michelle Thompson, the MP for Edinburgh West. Mrs Thomson was previously managing director of the ‘Business for Scotland’ group arguing for

Jeremy Corbyn is supposed to come to Scotland this week. Thursday’s visit will be his first since he became leader of the erstwhile people’s party. Then again, he’s been due to visit before only to find some better use of his time so who knows whether he can brave life beyond the wall this week? Yesterday John McDonnell, Jezzah’s vicar, used his speech to the Labour conference to plead with Scottish voters to “come home” to the party. It was past time, he suggested, that voters understood that the SNP are no kind of socialist revolutionaries. Which will not come as any great surprise to most Scots. That’s part of the

This morning Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, outlined the extent to which she agrees with Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party. Both wish Scotland, and indeed the United Kingdom, to remain a member of the European Union. It is true, as Ms Davidson noted, that the SNP oppose even holding a referendum on the terms of British membership but it is also the case that, at least notionally, each wish, or are on record as desiring, a broadly comparable set of EU-wide reforms. Now, as Mark Wallace rightly observes, Davidson’s case for continued EU membership is a purely practical one. The emotional and

The answer to this question, it turns out, comes from Kenny Dalglish. The answer is mebbys aye, mebbys naw. At the weekend the Scottish party’s former leader suggested Labour should have (some kind of) ‘free vote’ in the event of there being another independence referendum. Kezia Dugdale, the latest occupant of this poisoned throne, conceded Labour MSPs should, if there is another referendum, be free to campaign for independence if that’s where their heart lies. Now, in one respect this makes sense. Labour are in a hopeless position in Scotland right now. Moreover, the party cannot recover unless it wins votes from erstwhile supporters who have crossed the constitutional aisle to support the

A year ago today, Britain woke up to find the union saved – but only just. In 10 Downing St, the 45 per cent voting ‘yes’ looked like a victory, and the whole issue closed. I was in my hometown of Nairn that day, in the Highlands, where things looked rather different: after visiting pupils in my old school I wrote that, far from being closed, the debate had just begun. It wasn’t just the depressing closeness of the result, but the way the ‘no’ campaign had relied upon relentless negativity to make its case. As Joe Pike puts it in his fascinating account, the campaign ‘left a kingdom united, but

Nicola Sturgeon got one thing right this morning. A year on from the independence referendum, Scotland’s First Minister allowed that the plebiscite “invited us, individually and collectively, to imagine the kind of country we wanted to live in”. The answer, you may be surprised to be reminded, was Britain. Surprised, because it has since become commonplace to observe that the losers have become winners and the winners losers. Scotland, everyone agrees, is a changed place even though (almost) everyone agrees that the country would still reject independence were there another referendum next month. (The economic questions that hurt the Yes campaign so badly last year are, if anything, harder to answer

During our annual odyssey around the Scottish Highlands, I read Tears of the Rajas, Ferdinand Mount’s eloquent indictment of imperial expansionism in India. One of Ferdy’s themes is that the British lived in the country without ever attempting to make themselves of it. How far is that true of sporting visitors to Scotland? The SNP’s persecution of landowners gains traction from the fact that guests in shooting and fishing lodges encounter only keepers, gillies, stalkers. We disport ourselves within a social archipelago utterly remote from the mainland of the society in which it lies. In our defence, however, that is what tourists do everywhere in the world, much to the

As the Queen celebrates becoming Britain’s longest-serving monarch today, David Cameron led tributes for Her Majesty this morning in the Commons ahead of PMQs. While the Prime Minister praised her ‘unerring grace, dignity and decency’, Sir Gerald Howarth tried a different tack; showing his appreciation for her with an anecdote about his wife not wishing to attend a local donkey derby: ‘When I consult Lady Howarth and ask whether we should go to the donkey derby, and she says, “But we went there last year,” I say, “And Her Majesty does all sorts of things every single year.” Her Majesty has done a fantastic service to this nation.’ The leaders of the DUP and Lib Dems both managed

Paul Monaghan, the SNP MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, seems quite keen to become Parliament’s new David Ward by making offensive comments on Twitter. The Jewish Chronicle earlier this week extracted an apology from the MP for tweeting about the ‘proud Jewish race’ who were ‘persecuting the people of Gaza’ – but he’s also tweeted about the Union Flag being a ‘butcher’s apron’ and the ‘queen’s diarrhoea’. Given Emily Thornberry (unfairly, in my view) lost her Labour frontbench job for tweeting a picture of a house with the innocuous comment ‘Image from #Rochester’, Monaghan has had a relatively relaxing experience since these tweets have come to light, simply

With Alex Salmond currently engaged in a war of words with Nick Robinson over the BBC’s ‘disgraceful’ coverage of the Scottish referendum, there is one former Beeb employee he can turn to in his time of need. Step forward Paul Mason. Mason — who worked as Newsnight‘s economics editor before defecting to Channel 4 — joined Salmond on stage at the Edinburgh book festival to plant a few blows in the direction of his ex-employer. Despite pleas from Nicola Sturgeon for the BBC to enhance its presence in Scotland with a BBC Scotland TV channel, the PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future author said the BBC’s unionist values were part and parcel of

No, Nicola Sturgeon does not have much reason to be worried about Jeremy Corbyn. But the rest of the country does. To borrow from the tabloids, Corbyn is The Most Dangerous Man in Britain because, though no-one in London seems to appreciate this, he could be the man whose leadership of the Labour party leads to the end of Britain as we know it. Now I know people in England have tired of Scots banging on about the constitution. And I know that some things don’t have to be viewed through the prism of the constitution. Nevertheless, it’s a much more important issue than anything anyone says about trains. Or the health

The SNP may finally be having an effect on Westminster’s rules and traditions. Ever since the 56 SNP MPs descended on Parliament they have been repeatedly told off by the Speaker of the Commons for breaking tradition by clapping in the Chamber: ‘The convention that we do not clap in this Chamber is very, very long established and widely respected, and it would be appreciated if Members showed some respect for that convention.’ Despite this, the SNP MPs have shown little regard for the rule, even going so far as to applaud Simon Burns after he told them it was against Westminster etiquette to clap. Now the tide may be

In an interview with Sky News Australia, David Cameron’s former election strategist Lynton Crosby has today offered his thoughts on the Prime Minister’s rivals. Unsurprisingly, his conclusions are hardly flattering. However, the man who has taken the brunt of Crosby’s ire is Nigel Farage. Crosby claims that Ukip does not have ‘a long-term future’. Furthermore, instead of trying to win a Westminster seat again, Farage would be better advised to look for chat show work in Australia: ‘They are very reliant on the performance of their leader Nigel Farage and even he couldn’t win a seat. Sixth or seventh time he’s tried to win a Westminster seat. I think he might be

Although Nicola Sturgeon has pledged to tackle her party’s ‘cybernats’ over the online abuse of those who do not support Scottish independence, the SNP leader may need to reassess her current efforts following this weekend’s events. After news broke that Michelle Mone is to be awarded a peerage by the Tories, the lingerie entrepreneur was besieged with insults online from SNP supporters. However, the ‘cybernats’ were not done there. Following the death of Cilla Black at the age of 72, while many rushed to tweet messages of condolence to her friends and family, others simply recalled the late singer’s support of the Better Together campaign — during which Black signed

All political parties have their cultish moments but some are more cultish than others. That doesn’t mean all their supporters are kool-aid drinkers, just that, on balance, they’re more likely to be so. This is not, I should have thought, a particularly novel or controversial observation. But, for some reason, suggesting that the SNP’s followers are especially likely to be animated by what one might dub a quasi-religious fervour seems to annoy them. And yet, at other moments, they are keen to point out how the SNP is different from all the other parties. Which is kind of my point too. And, yes, the SNP’s supporters really do behave in