Scotland

To the north of Scotland, where in Aberdeen the SNP conference has begun. Activists are gathering, once again, to try and figure out how exactly Scotland might achieve independence after a decisive 2014 referendum, a Supreme Court slap down and, er, almost 20 years of substandard SNP rule. Best of luck, chaps! The party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn bagged the opening speech this morning, kicking off the conference in his usual punchy style by taking pops at his opponents. First up was an ornithology jibe directed at another politician from the north-east. Celebrating new murals that had sprung up around Aberdeen, Flynn quipped: ‘One of my favourite installations is a

After two years of war, both Hamas and the Israeli government have agreed to a ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump. The pact will see the remaining hostages released by Hamas and the bombing of Gaza to stop. British politicians of all stripes have lauded the deal, while Trump has been praised for his part in the negotiations. But one former first minister has been more than a little begrudging in his praise for the President’s coup. Ex-SNP first minister Humza Yousaf, whose wife had family living in Gaza, was quizzed today on BBC Radio Scotland about whether he accepted that Trump was helping bring about peace. In

The Conservative party conference may be drawing to a close, but the fighting spirit of the Tories isn’t going anywhere. At the Spectator’s well-attended Scotland event this afternoon – ‘Can the Tories turn back the teal tide?’ – MPs Andrew Bowie and Harriet Cross were packing the punches. The story of the Scottish Tories isn’t a negative one, they insisted, despite polling suggesting the next Scottish Parliament election could see them become the fourth party in Holyrood. Oh dear… But it wasn’t just Reform that was under attack from this punchy panel: shadow Scotland secretary Bowie had some stern words for the Kemi Badenoch detractors in his party. ‘Can I

To the Scottish Tory reception at Conservative Party conference, where leader Kemi Badenoch gave a rather punchy address before popping over to the Welsh Conservative event – her ‘second favourite devolved nation’, quipped Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay.  Lauding Findlay, Badenoch expressed her admiration for how he has coped with the journalist crowd north of the border. Turning on the Scottish lobby, Badenoch was not quite as gushing: I’m so thrilled at Russell’s tenaciousness how he charms the journalists whenever we go up there. Scottish journalists are a special, special group of people. Whenever, whenever I come down, they act like an alien has turned up from the moon or

Scottish Labour may be down but they’re not out. The polls have not been moving in their favour over the last few months and on the eve of Labour’s conference in Liverpool a Norstat survey for the Sunday Times brought more bad news: never mind losing out on first place at the 2026 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour could crash into third next year thanks to a surge in support for Nigel Farage’s leaderless tartan outfit. It would be a pretty humiliating state of affairs.  Yet despite all this, the mood in Scottish Labour is oddly buoyant, even upbeat. At the conference’s Scots Night, the Prime Minister made a quick cameo

Today the High Court ordered a company linked to ex-Tory peer Baroness Mone to pay £122 million to the Department of Health for breaching an NHS contract during the pandemic. The company – PPE Medpro – was set up by a group led by the peer’s husband Doug Barrowman. During the pandemic, Mone recommended the company to the government through the ‘VIP lane’ on the same day it was incorporated – fast-tracking it to the top of a priority list for personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts. While the then-Conservative government had flagged concerns with the company at the time – namely over its recent incorporation in 2020 and the conflict

At the last Labour conference before the 2026 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour is enjoying the limelight. With less than eight months to go until the Scottish parliament election, the party is trying to prove that – despite its rather dire polling – it can win. But in an increasingly fractured political world, Labour may have to rely on another political party to prop itself up if it is to have any hope of governing in Scotland. And given Nigel Farage’s tartan outfit is doing pretty well north of the border, a Labour-Reform pact – informal or not – could be one solution. But would Anas Sarwar do a deal with

To Liverpool, where politicians and delegates are gathering for Labour’s annual party conference. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has just finished his speech on the main stage, where he lead out his vision for his party with just eight months to go until next year’s Holyrood elections. But it was a non-Labour politician that dominated Sarwar’s discussion today, as Reform UK support in Scotland continues to surge. Slamming Nigel Farage as a ‘pathetic and poisonous little man’, the Scottish Labour leader fumed: You are a pathetic and poisonous little man that doesn’t care about Scotland, doesn’t understand Scotland, and that’s why Scotland will utterly reject you. All Reform can do is

It would be putting it mildly to say Sir Keir Starmer’s digital ID card plans have gone down like a lead balloon. The Prime Minister’s proposals to make ID cards compulsory for every British adult have raised concerns about freedom, data security and effectiveness – as it isn’t clear the policy would actually work to tackle illegal immigration if it was rolled out. Hardly the best start to conference season… Some of those criticising Starmer over his policy are – surprise surprise – Scottish nationalists. SNP First Minister John Swinney took to Twitter to rage: I am opposed to mandatory digital ID – people should be able to go about

After weeks of suspense, the big day has finally arrived. The Scottish government has arranged a meeting in Inverness with quango and industry bosses to discuss what is apparently one of the most pressing issues facing Scotland. Not the future of the oil and gas industry, not the failures in the country’s rural health service and not even the dualling of Scotland’s most dangerous road, which runs by the city. No – not content with bashing Westminster, the SNP government has declared a war on, er, seagulls. Ahead of today’s ‘serious’ meeting, the Scottish government dedicated £100,000 to controlling the increasingly mischievous bird population to cover gull deterrents – like lasers,

The otherwise run-of-the-mill First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament came to a dramatic conclusion this afternoon. Before the Presiding Officer moved onto the next item of business, former Conservative leader Douglas Ross made a point of order alleging that he had been assaulted by an SNP government minister. Crikey!   He told SNP First Minister John Swinney: ‘As I left the chamber yesterday, I was physically assaulted and verbally abused by your minister for parliamentary business, Jamie Hepburn.’ Ross went on to urge Swinney to confirm he takes ‘a zero-tolerance approach to threatening and intimidating behaviour by his ministers’. Talk about the bare minimum, eh? The incident followed a clash in parliament yesterday over, er,

The audacity of it! The hypocrisy! First, Nicola Sturgeon says yesterday in a TV interview that she’s ‘not that into flags’ and tells us all to ‘calm down about flags’. Then, later in the day, her successor as first minister, Humza Yousaf, chimes in with one of those creepy walking-while-talking videos in which he informs us that ‘Hate wrapped in a Saltire is still hate.’ Scotland’s flag ‘belongs to everyone’, he mawkishly intones. This, of course, comes in the context of Operation Raise the Colours, the flag raising campaign seen by some as a robust exercise in patriotism but criticised by others as intimidatory and racially motivated. The movement has spread to

As of late August, Nigel Farage’s Reform party now has representatives in local government, Westminster, the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish Parliament. The group’s only MSP is Graham Simpson, a frontline Conservative politician for almost ten years, who defected just under a fortnight ago. I caught up with him at the Reform conference – amid deafening tannoy announcements, last-minute timetable shifts and an ongoing government reshuffle – to hear more about the party’s plans for next year’s 2026 Holyrood election.  What exactly attracted Graham Simpson to Reform? ‘I saw the party as something of a blank canvas,’ he explained. The period following his defection was ‘a bit rough’, Simpson told

Kemi Badenoch’s rediscovery of the North Sea oil and gas industry would be more convincing had it not been successive Conservative governments that promoted its decline in the first place. In a speech in Aberdeen today, she will call for “every last drop” of oil to be extracted from our waters. Contrary to popular belief, there is still a lot of the black stuff lying there: up to 15 billion barrels, or enough to fuel the UK for 30 years. Norway has been drilling in the Arctic. “Bor ja Bor” (“Drill, baby, drill”), as they say in the Storting No one really knows how much is left because, while the North

The end of summer recess (in both Westminster and Holyrood) seems like a reasonable moment to leave tribal party politics at the door and assess whether 25 years of devolution in Scotland has met expectations. Has it improved the quality of life of ordinary Scots, and how it might be changed to ensure that it does better in future? I am still relatively new to politics, having enjoyed a career in business prior to being appointed a Scotland Office minister in 2021, but I was in the room long enough to experience both the satisfaction of being able to make a difference and the frustration of not being able to