Snp

Ian Blackford and the hounding of Charles Kennedy

BBC Alba, Scotland’s Gaelic language channel, is not normally required viewing for the political classes. This week, however, Lib Dems across the country were seeking it out on Freeview. The channel last night aired a documentary on Charles Kennedy, the former Lib Dem leader who stood down in 2006 after acknowledging his struggle with alcoholism, which persisted until he died in 2015 at the age of 55. Three weeks before his death and after 32 years as MP for a Highland constituency – latterly called Ross, Cromarty and Skye – he was defeated in the 2015 General Election by Ian Blackford, now Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party and

Unionists are preparing for the wrong fight

It makes bleak sense, when you think about it. The history of Unionism is littered with self-inflicted wounds and missed opportunities. So of course the Prime Minister would lose his grip on the Union Unit just as the Scottish government seems to be facing an acute crisis. Alex Salmond has once again withdrawn from giving evidence to MSPs after the Crown Office stepped in and got the Scottish parliament to redact his evidence (again). As it was already in the public domain, we can all see that the censored portions relate not to the naming of vulnerable women, but to criticism of Nicola Sturgeon. Yet it still feels hard to

The SNP’s transphobia muddle

For a party so devoted to trans rights, it seems strange that the SNP is less than forthcoming over its new definition of transphobia that their National Executive Committee adopted in recent days. The mind boggles over what they may be hiding. Despite the twin pressures of Brexit and Covid-19, not to mention a key Scottish election three months away and the ongoing Alex Salmond affair, it seems that the party is prioritising the gender debate. As a trans person, even I am getting exasperated by this relentless focus.  Let’s be clear: transphobic hate crime exists but it is nowhere near as commonplace as the transgender lobby would like us to

Scottish Tories are wrong to oppose voting for prisoners

The Scottish Tories don’t mean to be the way they are. Sometimes they just can’t help it. They are being that way again over plans to let some prisoners vote in the forthcoming Scottish parliament elections. I am not convinced those elections should be going ahead at all in the middle of a pandemic but, if they are to, there are good reasons for prisoners to be enfranchised. The Tories intend to force a vote at Holyrood on Wednesday against allowing those serving custodial sentences of less than 12 months to participate in the May 6 election. MSPs voted last February to extend the franchise in order to comply with

There is something rotten in Scottish politics

It is now two years since Nicola Sturgeon accepted the need for a parliamentary inquiry into how, and why, her government’s investigation into Alex Salmond was so thoroughly tainted by apparent bias it was unlawful.   Ever since then, she has repeatedly promised that both she and her government will fully co-operate with the Holyrood committee — set up to investigate the Scottish government’s response to claims of sexual misconduct against her predecessor. Many hollow promises have been made in the still-short history of the Scottish parliament but few have been emptier than this.   It is necessary to insist upon what the committee is not investigating: it takes no view on

The SNP’s education ‘stitch-up’

For anyone who assumes the SNP government’s secrecy and obstruction is limited to inquiries into itself and its past leaders, the fate of a major report into Scottish education is an instructive tale. Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), introduced in 2010, was the SNP’s grand idea for better learning in Scottish schools. Its ‘progressive’, ‘child-centred’ philosophy was contentious among teachers but was eagerly bought into by educationalists, educrats and teachers’ unions. Dissenters were generally caricatured as stuffy old reactionaries who wanted children bolted down in rows, facing a blackboard, as an authoritarian dominie catechised them in the rote memorising of formulae, dates and rules. Needless to say, the caricatures turned out

Does the SNP really want to copy Norway’s gender revolution?

Five years ago, in June 2016, Norway allowed anyone to change their legal gender. Legislative Decree 71 was everything that the gender identity brigade would like to introduce in the UK: no diagnosis, no medical reports, pure self-identification. The age limit was set at six years old, providing the child has at least one parent’s consent. This matters to the UK. Self-identification may be off the table at Westminster but it remains a live issue at Holyrood where Nicola Sturgeon’s government seems determined to force it through. Defending their draft bill on reform to the Gender Recognition Act, the Scottish government explained that ‘This proposal is in line with the

Why Boris Johnson must say no to a second Scottish referendum

It’s hard to believe in these early weeks of 2021, when the country is grappling with an unprecedented national health and economic crisis, that anyone could contemplate willingly throwing into the mix a constitutional crisis. Issuing a clarion call to break apart, when it could not be clearer we need to pull together. Yet that appears to be the course on which the SNP Government in Edinburgh is set with its 11-point plan for independence. For the UK Government to reject a demand to hold any time soon another referendum on Scottish independence is not, as Nicola Sturgeon would have it, ‘a denial of democracy’; it’s plain common-sense and the

Will we ever get to the truth in the Salmond inquiry?

The Spectator’s legal action in the Alex Salmond affair has prompted the Holyrood inquiry to rethink its approach. The magazine went to court to argue the media’s right to publish and the public’s right to read evidence from Salmond which the inquiry is refusing to publish.  A redacted version has already appeared on The Spectator website. Lady Dorrian agreed yesterday to amend an order against reporting information relating to the criminal trial against Salmond, which cleared him of 13 charges of sexual assault. The Sturgeon government’s separate sexual harassment probe into the former First Minister has previously been ruled ‘unlawful’ and ‘tainted by apparent bias’ by a Scottish court. Salmond

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon’s impossible achievement

Earlier this week, the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon boasted that 99.9 per cent of older people in care homes had been vaccinated. An impressive figure, one that she deserves to boast about — providing, of course, she acknowledges the successful vaccine drive has been thanks to the whole United Kingdom.  Now though it seems the saintly Sturgeon has gone a step further — managing to vaccinate over 100 per cent of all care home residents.  Perhaps it might be worth the Edinburgh government updating their official metrics so they include a more accurate estimate. Truly the Scottish National Party’s glorious endeavours know no bounds…

Is the SNP prepared for Scotland’s next financial crisis?

As the world continues its fight against Covid-19, the Scottish National Party has been busy plotting Scotland’s exit from the UK. If the party gets its way and wins another referendum, Scots could soon find themselves living under a ‘sterlingisation’ currency system. The implications could be disastrous. It would be wrong to dismiss talk of another referendum as hypothetical. Powers over the UK’s constitution may sit with Westminster, but recent polling demonstrates a sustained (small) majority for secession. The SNP continues to ride high in the polls, looks set to win convincingly in May’s Holyrood election and has announced it intends to hold another referendum without UK government approval, if necessary. Boris Johnson’s ‘once-in-a-generation’ stance

Sturgeon and the impunity of the SNP

Scottish politics tends to go through long bouts of single-party dominance. In the 19th century, the Liberals were in charge. After the war, Labour reigned unchallenged, which is why, in 1997, it drew up a devolution settlement on the assumption that Scotland would always be its fiefdom. But Scottish Labour then imploded. The Scottish National party is now the only game in town. Yet there are signs Nicola Sturgeon’s party is stumbling into the pitfalls that await all parties who spend too long in office. Incumbency eventually renders even the most alert and focused political practitioners complacent. Like Scottish Labour before it, the SNP has become arrogant, secretive and controlling.

Joanna Rossiter

What’s holding up Scotland’s vaccine rollout?

If I had a penny for every time I heard someone say that Nicola Sturgeon has had a ‘good pandemic’, I’d be living in my very own Scottish castle by now. Imposing restrictions one step ahead of Boris Johnson seems to have become Sturgeon’s go-to formula. But if the First Minister has been praised for her initial response to Covid-19, Sturgeon is running out of excuses to explain why Scotland’s vaccine programme lags behind that of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Having just managed to catch up on the over 80s briefly at the weekend, Scotland has now fallen significantly behind in its vaccination of the over 70s. And with England soon

Will Sturgeon admit to the cost of independence?

I’m not a great fan of economic modelling. Remember, for example, the Treasury’s infamous claim that unemployment would rise by between 500,000 and 800,000 within two years of a vote for Brexit (i.e. before we had actually left). In the event, unemployment fell in 2018 to reach the lowest level since the mid-1970s. Yet having used economic models to rubbish the case for Brexit, it becomes very difficult then to ignore forecasts which claim there would be an even bigger negative economic impact from Scottish independence. So what, in other words, will Nicola Sturgeon and other SNP politicians do about a paper just published by the LSE that claims that

Sturgeon learns to forgive

Nicola Sturgeon is not known to be a forgiving sort but at least one of her MPs will be glad that she can sometimes let bygones be bygones. Glasgow North East MP Anne McLaughlin MP has been promoted to the SNP frontbench at Westminster, with the grand title of shadow secretary of state for justice and immigration. She had previously been a junior spokeswoman on women and equalities. McLaughlin’s elevation comes despite an unfortunate incident on the campaign trail in 2019. At a media call in Dennistoun, someone thought it would be a good idea for the candidate to play a round of swingball with Sturgeon. On her first attempt,

Stephen Daisley

Sturgeon’s purge: why Joanna Cherry had to go

Joanna Cherry is out as the SNP’s Home Office spokeswoman at Westminster. The QC, who also shadowed the Justice Secretary, announced on Twitter that she had been ‘sacked’ from the nationalist frontbench. Her departure comes as part of a rejigging of what the party terms ‘the real opposition’. There is some established talent there (Alison Thewliss at Treasury, Alyn Smith at foreign affairs, Stewart McDonald at defence) and some fresh blood in the form of 2019-intake MP Stephen Flynn, bumped up from junior Treasury spokesman to ‘Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’. (The SNP refers to all its frontbenchers as shadow secretaries of state, which is

Katy Balls

SNP sacking exposes party infighting

The turmoil in the SNP has taken a new turn this lunchtime with the sacking of Joanna Cherry QC as shadow spokesperson on justice and home affairs in the House of Commons. The party’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford embarked on a reshuffle this morning — using a press release to welcome four MPs to the front bench. However, he failed to find any space to mention the departure of Cherry. Instead the influential SNP politician broke the news herself on social media: Cherry goes on to say that ‘Westminster is increasingly irrelevant to Scotland’s constitutional future’ and urge the SNP to ‘radically re-think our strategy’.  So, what’s going on? Cherry’s sacking comes after weeks

The SNP may never recover from its bungled Hate Crime Bill

The SNP has, until recently, looked unassailable. But amidst the drama surrounding the Alex Salmond inquiry, could a backlash to one of the party’s headline policy proposals sink the unsinkable? Opposition to the SNP’s proposed hate speech law is clearly growing. The Holyrood government assumed that pushing through the hate speech component of its Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, published in April 2020, would be plain sailing. It would probably attract the middle-class progressives who traditionally supported the SNP; it also looked fairly easy to sell to ordinary Scots as a technical updating of the law inspired by a carefully-drafted official report from a Court of Session judge. Any opposition from free

Boris Johnson’s Scotland trip is a gift to the SNP

Boris Johnson is in Scotland today and once again this counts as news. This is intolerable to everyone. Intolerable to Unionists because a prime ministerial appearance in Scotland should be as routine as a prime ministerial appearance in the Cotswolds. It should not count as a newsworthy moment. And it is intolerable to Scottish nationalists because, well, because everything is intolerable to Scottish nationalists. The Prime Minister’s visit can hardly be deemed ‘essential travel’ in the current circumstances even if it is also essential that Scotland never becomes a no-go area for Johnson or, indeed, other cabinet ministers. Making it seem such, chipping away at Johnson’s legitimacy, is one small

The Salmond inquiry is a farce

There never has been a clearer case made out for the utility of law and lawyers than the so-called Salmond Inquiry in the Scottish Parliament. The ‘Committee on the Scottish government handling of harassment complaints’ to give it its correct title, has thus far failed to unearth the truth about the machinations within the Scottish government quite simply because it isn’t equipped to do so. Inevitably there is strong suspicion that this Committee was given the job precisely because it would have insufficient expertise or powers to investigate adequately. Committee members appear to have worked extremely hard at carrying out their task. But without counsel to their inquiry, indeed not