Professional politician? No, a leader needs a track record grounded in real life experiences

THIS WEEK we found out many of our police stations are falling apart, our children are leaving university with more debt than ever before and, across a wide range of wellbeing measures, Scotland is in ...

The Flat Earth Society is alive and well in Scotland

THE SCOTLAND of my youth had much to be proud of. It had, after the Treaty of Union in 1707, spawned the Scottish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, a flowering of intellectual and cultural endeavour ...

Filling the vacuum increasingly left by Scotland's Conservatives

SCOTLAND is increasingly looking like a one party state, which wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1970’s Eastern Europe.  We have an SNP which is ever more authoritarian and whose politicians believe in high ...

Scottish Conservatives: a dearth of energy imagination and courage?

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 won less than two years previously. The failure was all ...

Stands Scotland where it did?

AFTER THE AGONY of three years, the end came with shocking swiftness. At 10.00 pm on Thursday 12 December, the BBC exit poll was read out. There would be a Conservative majority of about 80 ...

BREXIT'S ALIVE! But without the Brexit wingmen Flash Boris could not have saved the Universe

WELL, WHAT A WEEK THAT WAS!  We made it. We vanquished Corbyn the Clueless, Chairman of the Radical left, and saw a massive pro-Brexit majority returned to Westminster. The Queen's Speech, admittedly very awkwardly drafted, ...

Unionism is strong but its parties are establishment stooges – we have to do better

THEY RANG THEIR BELLS loud all winter but Friday 13th was the conclusion of five years of noisy unionist parties not listening. Instead of a vibrant multiparty democracy we have three establishment stooges vying for ...

Life in the SNP’s party state

BACK IN SPRING 2015, an SNP conference changed the party’s standing orders to tighten its discipline over SNP elected members with a new rule stating that ‘No member shall, within or outwith the parliament, publicly ...

Scotland and the EU: Sturgeon's myth and the EU reality

THE SNP IS BIG ON OUTRAGE, and nothing has ostensibly outraged it more than “Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will”. Certainly, 62 per cent of Scots (including me) voted Remain in ...

How to vote? The use of tactics in 2019

THE ELECTION on 12 December looks as if it will be the first election in which tactical voting will play a significant part. In England and Wales, those who are strong EU Leavers will vote ...

Think Movies: Joker

IN THE WORDS of Andrew Scott’s mould-shattering depiction of another villain, Jim Moriarty, “Did you miss me?”

After a period of absence, Think Movies is back and how better to return to ...

Ruth Davidson's hubris – Part 2

WHAT HAS Ruth Davidson’s announcement that she’s giving up her new job as a part-time lobbyist got to do with the announcement of a general election on December 12? Everything and nothing – and none of ...