Nicola sturgeon

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

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

It is so rare to see a Conservative push back against devolution creep that I didn’t believe my eyes at first. Stephen Kerr, newly elected to the Scottish parliament as a list member for Central Scotland,  highlighted this week the £2 million per year the Scottish government spends on a Brussels office with 17 staff members. This crypto-embassy is joined by similar set-ups in Washington DC, Beijing, Dublin, Berlin, Ottawa and Paris. All in, Nicola Sturgeon’s administration is spending just shy of £6 million each year to run these offices and employ almost 40 staffers across them. Kerr says: ‘It’s clear the SNP are doing this to try and boost international

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

I can’t seem to find the Oracle of Delphi’s complete works. The libraries remain shut and when I go to Google I find the search engine inadequate in the matter of the ‘Complete Pythia’. So I throw the following story out there unsourced in the sure and certain knowledge that next week’s letters page looks set to be a bloodbath for me. Spectator readers are among the most learned readers around, and I know my fate if I relay any of this inaccurately. Nevertheless, here we go. Several years ago an utterance I’m pretty sure came from the Delphic Oracle lodged in my head. A foreign king (I hear you

When the Scottish parliament was set up by Tony Blair in 1999, it seemed as if Labour would govern Holyrood for the foreseeable future. The Scottish Tories were a contradiction in terms. Devolution was sold as a device that would kill nationalism ‘stone dead’. Suffice to say, this plan did not quite work. The Scottish National party took power in 2007, the Tories were resurrected as the new opposition and it was Scottish Labour that ended up on the brink of extinction. Now, for the first time in two decades, Scottish Labour is on the up, with a new party leader. Anas Sarwar, 38, was elected in February so has

Sometimes, Westminster unwittingly makes quite a good case for Scottish independence. Britain’s Covid emergency has ended, but the damage of the last year is enormous: the knock-on effects of lockdown can be seen in NHS waiting lists, the devastated high street, the mental health backlog and the 20,000 pupils who are absent from the school register. There is urgent work to do, yet the government is engaged in a battle to the death over who paid for wallpaper in Downing Street. We see a Prime Minister at war with his ex-adviser, unable to rise above the fray and capitalise on the opportunity of his vaccine success. Then there’s the opposition,

Poor Douglas Ross had a difficult outing on Radio 4’s Today show this morning, being asked repeatedly as to whether the prime minister will visit Scotland prior to Holyrood polling on May 6 next month. A squirming Ross argued: I’m not sure if he’s going to come up in Scotland in this campaign. He had hoped to come up, and I thought he may come up, but given the pandemic and the restrictions to campaigning I’m not sure that’s likely now. Asked about Johnson previously visiting Scotland when Covid restrictions had been in force the Scottish Tory leader replied: Well, he’s also leading the UK effort for against a global pandemic

There was a Scooby Doo moment in Alex Salmond’s campaign launch on Tuesday. Something that made me think: ‘Ruh-roh’. The new leader of the Alba party was setting out his stall ahead of the 6 May Holyrood election and concentrating mostly on tactics. Voting for the SNP in the constituencies and Alba on the proportional list ballot, he contended, could elect a Scottish parliament with a ‘supermajority’ for independence. Thereafter — in fact, in week one of that new parliament — he would expect the Scottish government to open negotiations with Whitehall for the dismantling of the United Kingdom. He was not averse to another referendum like the one he