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Why should we expect Nicola Sturgeon to support Team GB?

It hasn’t been a great month for Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. First, there was the announcement that an official police investigation would take place into missing money from donations supposedly ‘ring-fenced’ for a future independence campaign; then questions about why Scotland’s vaccination targets had been missed led, apparently, to Sturgeon’s ‘Trump like meltdown’ (how she must have hated that comparison); and to cap it all off, Team GB started off rather well at the Tokyo Olympics. The sporting success led to politicians from all hues of the political spectrum tweeting their congratulations: all hues save the bright yellow of the Nats that is – from whence silence. Not one

Has the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ time finally come?

I announced my candidacy for the leadership of the Scottish Liberal Democrats this week and am under no illusions of the task ahead of me should I take the helm. In the aftermath of the coalition there was a real risk that the Liberal flame could flicker out. But with hard work, my colleagues and I have succeeded in turning our constituencies into fortresses. We have Willie Rennie to thank for that in large part. In his decade in charge of our party, Willie has gained a personal affection among the public with his colourful photo opportunities and the most recognisable smile in Scottish politics. When I think of Willie’s

Stephen Daisley

The horror of Scotland’s drug death epidemic

Drug deaths in Scotland have reached their highest-ever level, with Scottish government figures recording 1,339 fatalities in 2020. When the statistics for 2019 were published last December, confirming Scotland as the drug death capital of Europe, Nicola Sturgeon was forced to sack her drugs minister and pledge a £250 million investment in support and treatment services. The current drugs minister, Angela Constance, need not worry about her position just yet. Today’s numbers reflect the final year of her predecessor’s watch, but they nonetheless make for brutal reading. Constance has called them ‘heart-breaking’ but that is far from adequate. 2020 was the seventh year in a row in which the death rate

Can Cole-Hamilton prevent the death of the Scottish Lib Dems?

As expected, Alex Cole-Hamilton has put himself forward to lead the Scottish Lib Dems, announcing his candidacy with an obligatory walking-and-talking video introducing himself to party members. It’s unclear whether anyone else will stand before the August 20 nominations deadline and it could well be that Cole-Hamilton wins by default. The rules certainly favour that outcome, with only Members of the Scottish Parliament allowed to stand, and the party having only four of those. Cole-Hamilton represents a generational shift from outgoing leader Willie Rennie, an old-fashioned social democrat at a loss to keep up with — or, frankly, understand — the lively array of identity-centric grievances threatening to replace liberalism

Why the SNP fraud allegations matter

A common refrain from opponents of the Scottish National party is that ‘the SNP is not Scotland’. But it often seems they haven’t got the message, especially when Nationalist activists take it on themselves to stand guard on the border against the plague-ridden English. This week, the people who may really wish they’d done more to police the borders between themselves and the SNP are none other than grassroots separatists in the ‘Yes movement’. If you missed this story, the long and short of it is that a few years ago the SNP went on a fundraising drive. They secured hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations on the basis

Sturgeon’s economic council is a fig-leaf for independence

This month’s announcement of a new economic advisory council formed by the Scottish government came with the usual flow of superlatives. The 17-member group will publish a strategy paper later this year to help deliver the ‘transformational change Scotland needs’, according to economy secretary Kate Forbes. We are promised ‘bold ideas’ that will bring ‘new, good and green jobs’. We have been here before. This group replaces a previous Council of Economic Advisers set up by Alex Salmond in 2007. It too had a remit to galvanise the Scottish economy. It provided 14 years of strategic advice (seven of those under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership) to the SNP administration with no

Revealed: The SNP strategy for a second independence vote

A new leaflet from the SNP says another referendum on independence is ‘an issue of basic democracy’ and that Boris Johnson ‘is seeking to block the democratic right of the people of Scotland to decide our own future’. The eight-page missive, which I understand is being distributed initially to party members, is entitled ‘A Referendum for Recovery’ and features the ‘Yes’ branding of the SNP’s campaign for indyref2. The booklet is anchored by a short essay by Mike Russell, party president and former constitution minister in Nicola Sturgeon’s devolved administration at Holyrood. He writes that the Prime Minister is ‘changing the whole foundation of the UK’ from ‘a voluntary union

Who can make the Scottish Lib Dems great again?

Willie Rennie’s resignation — announced, as only he could, via a self-shot video while climbing Benarty Hill in western Fife — means there’s now a vacancy at the top of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Given the party holds just four seats at Holyrood and four at Westminster, the summit of Benarty enjoys a more elevated position than the Lib Dem leadership. But can Rennie’s replacement have any more luck in reviving the party’s fortunes? The party was in government at Holyrood from 1999 to 2007 as Scottish Labour’s junior partner but Nick Clegg’s coalition with David Cameron, the rise of the SNP and the political realignment brought about by the

PMQs: Starmer can never quite skewer Boris

Sir Keir Starmer got through the whole of PMQs without telling us that his mum was a nurse and he used to run the Crown Prosecution Service. What a relief. Instead, he gave us a different look-at-me moment. Hailing England’s victory over Germany last night he confided that his pleasure was of a purer and more refined variety than anyone else’s, ‘having been at Wembley for Euro 96 and experienced the agony of that defeat.’ The Labour leader is running out of disasters to berate the government with. The economy is on the mend. Freedom from lockdown looms. He can’t mention the Batley and Spen by-election in case he loses.

Nicola Sturgeon isn’t serious about IndyRef2

The announcement reeked of desperation. Nicola Sturgeon is ‘delighted’ that the SNP National Executive Committee has approved her nomination of retired MSP and party grandee Mike Russell as ‘political director of the HQ independence unit’. The statement, put out on Twitter last week, aimed to give a sense of momentum and industrious activity: Russell at the head of an elite squad of Nationalist campaigners who will deliver on promises of another referendum.  The appointment of Russell is not so much a sign of progress for the Nationalists as confirmation that their project to break up the UK has stalled. It follows the resignation, after just a few months in post,

PMQs: Ian Blackford’s trade rage

Covid changes its identity more often than Grant Shapps. The latest strain emerged with the appealingly exotic name ‘Indian’. Now it’s been given a more military-sounding tag, ‘the Delta variant.’ Today’s PMQs featured a tussle over the date on which this dangerous mutant sneaked through the UK’s borders. Sir Keir Starmer waved a file of papers at Boris. ‘It’s all here in the transcript,’ he said and he accused the PM of waiting too long to slap a ‘red list’ notice on India.  For once, Sir Keir had his timelines in a twist. Boris flourished a counter-file at the opposition leader. It was written, said the PM, by the general

Stephen Daisley

Does this SNP politician think buses are racist?

One of the benefits of devolution has been giving Scots their own parliament in which the great issues of the day can be discussed. Issues that might not otherwise make it onto the political agenda. Now the Scottish parliament has posed a question that can be avoided no longer: are buses racist? James Dornan is the SNP MSP for Glasgow Cathcart and the man who has brought these matters to light. Speaking in a debate at Holyrood last week, Dornan raised the enduring blight of ‘institutional prejudice’ against Irish Catholics in Scotland. He could have cited many examples in evidence but admirably chose to make a more original case: ‘To

Scotland needs English migrants

Post-pandemic economic recovery was on the agenda at Holyrood this week, with Scotland’s finance minister Kate Forbes in full JFK-style ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ visionary mode. ‘Wherever someone works, and in whatever capacity, if they think that they can serve our country as we face the prospect of rebuilding, this is their personal invitation. Our strength is in our united vision to work together — across party lines, sectors and regions — to rebuild,’ declaimed Forbes. A cynic might wonder if ‘serve our country’ will turn out to mean serving the nationalist interest rather than the national one. It would be no surprise if trade

The SNP’s latest separation blueprint is pure project fantasy

‘A SNP MSP has claimed an independent Scotland could guarantee a couple with children a minimum income of more than £37,000 a year,’ the Daily Record reported breathlessly this week, as it covered the SNP’s latest plans for an independent Scotland. Then came the clincher: ‘Neil Gray admits the plans have not been costed.’ Neil Gray is an SNP MSP and deputy convenor of the party’s Social Justice and Fairness Commission, which has published its final report: A Route Map to a Fair Independent Scotland. One of the report’s key recommendations is for a pilot of a minimum income guarantee. Gray, referencing work done by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, suggests

Are ‘controversial stickers’ really a matter for the police?

Has Police Scotland misunderstood the purpose of policing? A recent crackdown on ‘controversial stickers’ appears to suggest as much. ‘On Monday 17th May we received a report of controversial stickers having been placed on lampposts,’ said a message on Kirkcaldy police’s Twitter feed, posted last week. ‘Should you come across stickers of this nature, please contact ourselves or Fife Council so that their removal can be arranged’. So what did the stickers actually say? It transpired that they were emblazoned with the words: ‘Women won’t wheesht’ Baffling? Maybe. But is it really the business of the police to investigate such stickers? Various hashtags, including ‘SexNotGender’ and ‘WarOnWomen’, were also included. But

Nicola Sturgeon and the rise of the traumocracy

In March, Nicola Sturgeon was asked about her response to Scotland’s drug deaths crisis. She said failings were ‘not because we didn’t care, or because we weren’t trying to do things, but we have concluded because we couldn’t do anything else, that we didn’t get it right’. This is how she addressed the worst drugs death rate in Europe and the government failings which fuelled it. An admission of regret and some self-justification: a recognition of the harm done but little in the way of a roadmap for future prevention. Drug deaths were a matter of regret rather than a health and social problem that needs solving. It wasn’t about

Stephen Daisley

In praise of Kate Forbes’s Christian faith

Politics tends to attract people who consider themselves and their every mundane word and deed an example of great bravery. Like journalism and entertainment, it is an industry constructed around the pleasing myth that, whatever level you’re working at, you are engaged in the business of saving the world. Yet few politicians say much today that is courageous, or even all that original. When every dissenting view, colourful remark, or provocative thought brings with it the threat of cancellation, you have to console yourself with the fiction that saying the same thing as everyone around you is a courageous feat. So when I say that Kate Forbes has done something

The problem with ‘Devo-max’

A common failing of pro-Union politicians down the years has been the stubborn belief that there exists somewhere a tidy ‘solution’ to the problem of separatist nationalism. With new polling showing that ‘devo-max’ would comfortably win a three-way referendum, it appears to be silly season once again. The history of unionism’s efforts to engineer decisive solutions to the challenges of separatism is an unhappy one. Devolution was meant to be it, after all. As Labour’s manifesto said in 1997:  ‘A sovereign Westminster Parliament will devolve power to Scotland and Wales. The Union will be strengthened and the threat of separatism removed.’ Talk about ‘not understanding how the United Kingdom works’.

Nine lessons from the elections

Here are the big things I learned from Thursday’s elections and their aftermath. 1. The Scottish parliament will vote to hold a referendum on independence for Scotland — but the legislation probably won’t be introduced till late 2022. 2. The earliest there would be a referendum would be 2023. 3. Boris Johnson’s revealed preference is to persuade the people of Scotland of the merits of remaining within the UK, rather than exploiting the Westminster government’s ‘reserve power’ to veto independence. He wants to avoid what would be widely seen in Scotland as the tyranny of Westminster depriving the Scottish people of a voice on their future. That means a referendum in

James Forsyth

Westminster must avoid the Sturgeon trap

The challenge for the UK government in the coming months is to make Nicola Sturgeon look like a constitutional obsessive. The SNP wants to frame the situation as Boris Johnson and the Tories denying the people of Scotland a referendum. The election results suggest there is no overwhelming clamour for a second referendum, with no SNP overall majority and the votes split evenly between pro and anti-Union parties. But UK government ministers should avoid giving the SNP the headlines they crave. They should side-step constitutional questions and instead emphasise co-operation on dealing with the after-effects of the pandemic. Ministers should force Sturgeon to make all the running on the second referendum