RECENT MONTHS have left me more despondent about Scottish politics than ever before. No doubt the ennui and oppression of lockdown, endured in what has felt increasingly like a one-party state, has
AS I WRITE, I have no idea if Dominic Cummings will eventually fall on his sword, deciding à la Alastair Campbell that the advisor has to go
Tom Gallagher article from Tuesday 19, May, 2020 LAST WEEK the libertarian politician Douglas Carswell came near to admitting that decentralisation measures introduced in Britain over the last twenty years had gone badly awry. He tweeted: “Let’s be honest, it’s not been a great moment for us localists, this crisis. Police commissioners have been invisible. The […]
Linda Holt article from Friday 24, April, 2020 OFFICIALLY, CONSTITUTIONAL HOSTILITIES have been suspended. There is an eerie silence from leading politicians akin to the World War One Christmas truce. The customary manoeuvres about Westminster Tories and indy-obsessed Nats are nowhere to be seen. The First Minister says she has “never been less interested in just reducing something […]
LATE ON SATURDAY night the Sun published pictures of Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Catherine Calderwood out for a walk with her family and dog on Earlsferry
Tom Gallagher article from Monday 2, March, 2020 ONE OF THE MOST PERPLEXING outcomes of the ‘These Islands’ conference (first discussed here on 24 February) was the condescension or impatience displayed towards England. England’s poorer regions have made no objections to large fiscal transfers to Scotland and Northern Ireland, nor to increasing emphasis being given in […]
THE SCOTTISH CONSERVATIVE leadership contest is hotting up. 18,000 Scottish Conservative members* have been sent their ballot papers, and they have under two weeks left
EARLY SIGNS suggest that the EU is hoping to play hardball in negotiations over regulation; its negotiators are clearly hell-bent on restricting competition from us. We
Eben Wilson article from Monday 13, January, 2020 CONVERSATIONS in the South of England over the festive season have convinced me of a change taking root. It’s a driven by the political re-focussing towards the needs of the North of England as an outcome of the December election. As a global Scot I have often […]
NO MATTER how they spin it, the general election result for Scottish Conservatives was grim. The party lost more than half the Scottish MPs it
LAST THURSDAY during a sunny walkabout inspecting our potholed infrastructure in Crail, my fellow East Neuk councillor, whom I work well with, asked me about
IN THE run-up to the EU referendum on June 23rd, you could hardly move without hearing prophecies of doom by the Great and the Good