Politics

No wonder they didn’t want to let cameras in at last night’s hustings. Not a day goes by it seems without a leading SNP politician embarrassing themselves in one forum or another. Today’s hapless half-wit is MP John Nicolson, who has found himself accused of racism after tweeting a video shortly before appearing on the BBC’s Debate Night. Preparing to go on air, the member for Ochil and South Perthshire tried his hand at social media influencing, giving his very own ill-thought make up tutorial in the green room. Addressing the camera in the video captioned ‘Politicians that do their own makeup tend to “tandoori” themselves’, Nicolson declared: ‘Now I

Independence was the main focus at the first hustings of the SNP leadership race last night. Humza Yousaf called for a slower route to separation. Ash Regan clarified the workings of her ‘voter empowerment mechanism’. But Kate Forbes unveiled a more radical approach: announcing she would fight for another independence referendum within three months of the 2024 general election. ‘For too many years, we’ve become the party of referendums,’ Forbes said, ‘rather than the party of independence.’ But, in an apparent contradiction, she then pledged to ‘fight for the right’ to hold an independence vote within three months of the next general election. When pressed later, she confirmed that her

The SNP’s ill-fated gender reforms shaped Nicola Sturgeon’s last days as First Minister, but if Humza Yousaf has learned from the experience, he is not showing it. The SNP’s crown prince – or perhaps clown prince – is tying himself in knots over the sex of a double rapist who has just been sentenced to eight years. ‘Is Isla Bryson a man or a woman?’ Sky News asked him. You would think any serious contender for the top job in the Scottish government would have prepared a convincing response to such a predictable question. Not Yousaf; the best he could come up with was that Isla Bryson was ‘at it’.

It’s not a great time to be a friend of Matt Hancock, knowing that any moment the Telegraph might splash the contents of your private WhatsApp conversations. Still, good old Jim Bethell – a veteran of the Ministry of Sound and the Department of Health – was wheeled out to defend him tonight. And in his eagerness to defend his onetime boss, the Old Harrovian made an extraordinary revelation: that the British government debated whether it might have to ask people to exterminate all pet cats during the early days of the Covid pandemic. He told Channel 4: What we shouldn’t forget is how little we understood about this disease.

Wanted: a chief of staff for Sir Keir. Steerpike was first to break the news last year that the Labour leader was on the hunt for a top civil servant to become his head honcho. And today Sky has a delicious report that suggests he has found his man – or woman in this case. For it seems that the person best suited to pursuing Labour’s electoral success is none other than, er, Sue Gray, of Cabinet Office fame. She of course was the fearsome sleaze-buster who investigated Boris Johnson’s lockdown parties, playing her role in events that brought down the man who achieved the best Tory result for 30