Today’s Thinking

Jill Stephenson

The pension lie and other separatist myths

WOULD YOU Adam and Eve it? The SNP’s propaganda rag, The National, has published an article called ‘Fears for pensions in an independent Scotland quelled in Yesser’s new video’. The fourteen-minute video in question is made by ...

Tom Gallagher

Eamon de Valera and Nicola Sturgeon – a difficult comparison

EDWARD GARNIER, a former Conservative MP and now a peer, is an experienced lawyer who, at one stage was advising John Major in his bid to oppose Brexit. In the House of Lords last month, he ...

Alan Sked

Merkel and Sturgeon: two popular failures?

IT STRIKES ME both Angela Merkel and Nicola Sturgeon are regarded in the media as long-serving leaders who are pleasant, capable and successful. I don’t know how pleasant Sturgeon is since I have never met her but she seems more ...

Tom Gallagher

How power-hungry couples overreach – is Sturgeon approaching nemesis?

WHEN A MARRIED COUPLE effectively control politics and government, it is sufficiently unusual to evoke interest. When such a duumvirate leads to a collapse of governmental standards and impairs public morality, it breeds alarm. This has ...

Jill Stephenson

How authoritarian is the SNP’s rule in Scotland?

JUST WHAT kind of regime does Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP lead in Scotland? It is no longer what we would consider a normal parliamentary democracy to be. It is true there is still a ...

Jon Dobinson

Take the next Exit – and avoid the road to Lockdown Hell

NOW THAT we have satnav, it’s rare to feel the frustration of travelling in a car where the driver resolutely heads in the wrong direction despite being told repeatedly that “it’s the other way!”

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Tom Gallagher

Dictators trembled at Ceausescu's fall – democrats should shudder at Sturgeon’s rise

Troubled dictators were keen to learn why a seemingly all-powerful Nicolae Ceausescu fell almost overnight. Tom Gallagher thinks it is normal for democrats of all hues to ask why, in one corner of the West – Scotland – the political system is, in worrying aspects, starting to resemble Ceausescu’s.

Max Young

SNP vaccination policy could only have resulted in the deaths of thousands more Scots

THE UK IS ON TRACK to meet its target of 15 million Coronavirus vaccine injections by the 15th of February. Some 1.8 million jabs were given last week, and the daily average is accelerating.

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Michelle Ballantyne

If the vaccine is our saviour what is the tipping point when restrictions can be lifted?

THE EMERGENCE of Covid-19 and its subsequent variants has seen decisions being made that would have been unthinkable only a year ago. The idea our liberties could be restricted, our livelihoods threatened and our children’s ...

Tom Gallagher

Ceausescu’s messiah complex: could it happen in Scotland now?

PLURALIST democracies as well as communist People’s Democracies have legally codified rules setting out how their political systems are supposed to function. The separation of powers is supposed to be the bedrock of liberal democracy. ...

Alan Sked

Can Brexit save the Union?

THE POLITICAL EDITOR of the Financial Times, Philip Stephens, has just published a 464-page dirge on our exit from the EU called ‘The Path From Suez to Brexit’. The title is presumably meant to emphasise the ...

Alan Sked

Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic! The UK should hold its nerve

DESPITE her looming showdown with Alex Salmond, British politicians are still scared stiff of Nicola Sturgeon and her threat of Indyref2. Only Boris has the measure of her. As far as he is concerned any ...