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Sturgeon’s rush for a referendum could backfire

The Holyrood election campaign kicks off with Nicola Sturgeon buoyed by James Hamilton’s report concluding that she did not break the ministerial code. Unionists in both London and Edinburgh have been taken aback by how decisively Hamilton stated that Sturgeon had not broken the code. But, as I say in the magazine this week, it would be wrong to think Sturgeon hasn’t been damaged by this whole business.  Voters feel that Scotland’s recovery from the pandemic should come first The independence bill her government published this week was also a misjudgement. It states that the referendum will be held in the first half of the next Scottish parliament. In other words,

Sturgeon suffers courtroom blow over church lockdown rules

The Scottish government has suffered a major reversal in court over its Covid-19 regulations. The Court of Session has found its blanket ban on public worship to be unlawful. In January, Nicola Sturgeon closed places of worship across Scotland ‘for all purposes except broadcasting a service or conducting a funeral, wedding, or civil partnership’. She said at the time that, while ministers were ‘well aware of how important communal worship is to people… we believe this restriction is necessary to reduce the risk of transmission’. Canon Tom White, parish priest of St Alphonsus in Glasgow’s east end, and representatives of other Christian denominations, sought judicial review. They argued that this closure

Hamilton Report clears Sturgeon on all four counts – but with redactions

Nicola Sturgeon did not break the ministerial code over the Alex Salmond affair. This is the verdict of James Hamilton QC after his inquiry, with a 61-page report that clears her on all four charges.  She got things wrong in her account to parliament, Hamilton said, by giving an ‘incomplete narrative of events.’ But this was a ‘genuine failure of recollection’ and not deliberate. On the four points he was asked to look into (many of the questions facing her are outside Hamilton’s brief) he has given as strong an exoneration as she could have hoped for. And did she mislead parliament? He ducks this question. “It is for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether they were

Stephen Daisley

What will Alex Salmond do next?

The Scottish Parliament goes into recess on Wednesday ahead of devolved elections on 6 May. That gives Nicola Sturgeon three days to see off her opponents (inside the SNP as much as outside) before the campaign begins proper. Before she gets there, we will have to face the publication of the Holyrood inquiry report. This is the SNP-chaired parliamentary panel tasked with investigating the SNP government’s mishandling of sexual harassment allegations against former SNP first minister Alex Salmond. Sturgeon’s government launched an internal investigation into Salmond, her one-time mentor turned nemesis, that was ruled by the Court of Session to be ‘unlawful’, ‘procedurally unfair’ and ‘tainted by apparent bias’. The

Katy Balls

Nicola Sturgeon’s nightmare week

It’s only days before the Holyrood election campaign gets underway and Nicola Sturgeon is facing one of the most testing weeks of her political career. Two verdicts are due in the coming days on whether the First Minister broke the ministerial code over the Alex Salmond inquiry.  One is the finding of Scottish parliament’s Alex Salmond committee which is due on Tuesday. The panel, which is made up of MSPs, is widely expected to say she did mislead parliament. Sturgeon and her allies will likely dismiss it as politically motivated. Already this line is being pushed out by the First Minister and SNP politicians. Were Hamilton to find that Sturgeon knowingly misled parliament, it would be the worst case

Why are so many Labour supporters keeping shtum about Sturgeon?

What now for Nicola Sturgeon? Labour MP Jess Phillips isn’t sitting on the fence. ‘At best Nicola Sturgeon was unprofessional with those women’s lives; at worst, she misled parliament,’ Phillips told Question Time viewers last night. Keir Starmer has also said Scotland’s First Minister must go if she did indeed break the ministerial code in the course of the Alex Salmond saga. But why are so many others in the Labour ranks unwilling to speak out against the SNP? Sturgeon’s departure is, after all, in the Labour party’s best interests. In two months’ time, Labour will be looking to take seats from the SNP at the Scottish election. And, politics

Feminists should fear the SNP’s hate crime bill

The SNP’s new hate crime legislation is bad news for women. Yet the sad reality is that too many feminists have failed to speak up about the importance of free speech – and now we may all end up paying the price. The legislation creates a new offence of ‘stirring up hatred’ on the grounds of religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, or transgender identity. But while it provides a power for Scottish Ministers to make regulations adding the characteristic of sex to this list, for now, sex is not included. This leaves women like me, who don’t agree with the emerging gender identity ideology, in danger of being targeted. It is also not hard to spot the inconsistency

Sturgeon’s future now hangs in the balance

At First Minister’s Questions this afternoon Nicola Sturgeon accused Ruth Davidson of peddling baseless conspiracy theories, dredged up from ‘the bottom of the barrel’. For all that Davidson, like the rest of Sturgeon’s political opponents, might profess that their interest in the Salmond-Sturgeon affair rests on nothing more than ‘just the facts, ma’am’, the First Minister was clear their concern is primarily opportunistic and political. If they wished to pal around with Alex Salmond and his cronies in some kind of ‘old boys club’ that was their prerogative, but the people of Scotland will deliver their verdict in May’s elections. And there is, of course, some truth in that charge. The

Stephen Daisley

George Galloway is toxic to the Unionist cause

My mob originates, we have come to assume, from somewhere in Ireland, though exactly where we don’t know. Humza Yousaf, justice secretary in the Scottish government, was born in Glasgow to immigrant parents — one from Pakistan, the other from Kenya. We were contemporaries at university (Glasgow), I became a journalist around the time he became a politician (SNP, alas), and while I’ve long been impressed by his abilities, his smiley-sinister Hate Crime Bill confirms him to be a nightmarish fusion of Judith Butler and Mary Whitehouse. What has never occurred to me is the notion that Yousaf is less Scottish than me. If anything, I wish he’d tone it

Watch: Nicola Sturgeon’s hostile Covid briefing

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon appeared to be in a poor mood today, after David Davis used parliamentary privilege in the Commons last night to make a series of allegations against the Scottish government over its handling of the Salmond investigation. After the ITV journalist Peter Smith asked Sturgeon about the new allegations at the Scottish government’s Covid briefing, the First Minister at first refused to answer the question at all, saying ‘I’m not having this briefing side-tracked into the latest instalment of the conspiracy theories we’ve all be hearing about for a long time’. Sturgeon then took a rather more hostile approach, saying she would only answer questions from the

David Davis: Scotland – A deficit of power and accountability

For the past few months, Scotland has been transfixed by the Holyrood inquiry seeking the truth of what went wrong with the investigations into the former First Minister, Alex Salmond.  The inquiry is investigating matters of the most serious kind. Serious for the proper handling of sexual harassment complaints in Scotland. Serious for the accountability of those in positions of power, including the Scottish Government’s Permanent Secretary and its Lord Advocate. And serious, if the former First Minister’s claims hold any water, for the future of the present First Minister’s administration of Scotland. These matters are unquestionably something that should properly be dealt with in Holyrood. But Holyrood has great difficulties exposing what went

Is Nicola Sturgeon’s loyalty her big weakness?

Loyalty is an important virtue. Indeed, it was loyalty to my former boss which led me to offer to act as Alex Salmond’s spokesman during his Court of Session battle with the Scottish Government. It was, at the time, a thankless task, trying to persuade sceptical former media colleagues that the whole affair was a stitch-up. Those same journalists don’t require much persuasion today. Once the Scottish Government belatedly conceded the errors in their flawed complaints procedure, at a cost to the taxpayer of at least a million pounds, and the accusations against Salmond were thrown out by a criminal court, the repercussions began.  The Scottish Parliamentary Inquiry into how

The SNP’s radical assault on freedom of speech

When Humza Yousaf first proposed his Hate Crime Bill, I compared it to the late, unlamented Offensive Behaviour Act. Similarly rushed through Holyrood by the SNP, it sought to rid Scottish football of sectarian behaviour by, among other things, criminalising the singing of certain songs at matches. The Act didn’t specify which songs and so it was left to the discretion of a police officer overhearing a chant to decide whether or not it would be offensive to a reasonable person. Astonishingly enough, this didn’t work out and such was the fan and legal profession backlash that the Act was eventually repealed — in the teeth of SNP opposition. The

Why should independence voters like me have to support the SNP?

Scotland would be an independent country today if only the SNP had made one simple promise. Back in 2014, as the referendum approached, it was clear that the party could win only at the price of its demise. Alex Salmond should have promised to disband the SNP if ‘Yes’ won the day. For those of us who disliked the SNP and Alex Salmond, but who favoured an independent Scotland, it would have been enough to bring us on board. Now, his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, is making the same mistake as she attempts to win a second referendum vote. The SNP, of course, doesn’t see things this way. Its supporters fail

Ruth Davidson’s exit reveals Scottish Tories’ independence secret

Ruth Davidson has used her final speech to the Scottish Conservative conference to appeal to pro-Union voters. In a video streamed on the first day of the event, the former party leader said Scotland had passed ‘peak Nat’ and that, while the SNP was bound to emerge as the largest party after the May 6 devolved elections, the Tories could still deprive Nicola Sturgeon of an overall majority. This was imperative, she said, so that the Scottish Government could be ‘held in check’. She contended: If there’s no check on an SNP government after May, they will put their obsession with securing a second independence referendum above Scotland’s national interest.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson’s new approach to an independence referendum

Unionists are finding reasons for optimism when it comes to saving the union. As Nicola Sturgeon comes under fire north of the border over her handling of the Alex Salmond inquiry, ‘No’ has taken the lead in several recent independence polls. A poll this week for the Scotsman also suggested the SNP is no longer set for a majority in May’s Scottish parliament election; instead it predicted a hung parliament. Of course, the SNP could still secure a majority in the upcoming elections. If anything, that is still viewed as the more likely scenario by Tories in Westminster. This is in part why ministers are having to carefully plan their response as to what do in such

The SNP’s foray into high finance has come at a big price

In a refreshing twist for Scotland’s party of government, the latest potential scandal facing the SNP administration does not involve allegations of sexual misconduct, but rather high finance. Earlier this week, finance company Greensill Capital filed for administration. Greensill specialised in supply-chain finance, which involves acting as an intermediary to raise money on the back of payment commitments between companies and their suppliers. Greensill’s innovative financing arrangements were instrumental in metals tycoon Sanjeev Gupta’s rapid expansion of his business empire, including his 2016 acquisition of an aluminium smelter at Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands, plus two nearby hydroelectric dams. Companies within Gupta’s GFG Alliance group bought the industrial assets from

Scottish independence isn’t inevitable

Back in the autumn, every Scottish poll delivered bad news for Unionists. The ‘yes’ side was consistently ahead and the Nationalists began to argue that independence was becoming the ‘settled will’ of the Scottish people. But polling in the last seven days has, as I say in the magazine this week, disrupted this narrative.  There have now been several polls, including two more published just this morning, showing the Union side ahead. It is clear that there is nothing inevitable about Scottish independence. The Scotsman poll today also indicates that the SNP will fall just short of an overall majority in the Holyrood elections in May. Now, this shift in the

Letters: What happens if interest rates rise?

Spinning plates Sir: Kate Andrews is right to highlight the looming risk of inflation (‘Rishi’s nightmare’, 6 March), but to say that the UK has known barely any inflation for almost a generation misses a very painful point. It may be true for consumer prices. Low interest rates and quantitative easing, along with other ill-advised stimuli, have caused huge inflation over the past two decades in the single greatest expense throughout most working people’s lives: the cost of housing. Along with rash promises such as the triple lock, it has been responsible for a vast transfer of wealth from young to old, from the less well-off to the more affluent,

James Forsyth

Is Sturgeon losing support for Scottish independence?

Every politician likes to say that they don’t pay attention to opinion polls. In my experience, this is almost universally untrue. Those who sail in an ocean of public opinion want to know which way the wind is blowing. The most recent polls show the wind is in the Tories’ sails at the moment: the YouGov post-Budget survey indicated a 13-point Tory lead. But in Scotland for the past year, polls have consistently shown majority support for independence. That’s now changing. Nicola Sturgeon can’t claim she doesn’t pay attention to the polls; she has too often commented on ones showing independence ahead. After roughly 20 polls in a row put