Scotland

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Nats blast Humza in ministerial interview series

Uh oh. There’s more trouble in nationalist paradise. A series of interviews with past and present Scottish government ministers have been published on the Institute for Government website as part of a devolved government series – and they make for some rather revelatory reading… As if the Nats hadn’t aired their dirty laundry enough, the IfG interviewees – including former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and disgraced ex-health minister Michael Matheson – pulled no punches when conversations turned to their colleagues. One person in particular came out of it all worse for wear – with hapless Humza Yousaf on the receiving end of a rather lot of criticism. First, the SNP’s

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Will the SNP government lose yet another health minister?

To Scotland, where today the SNP government’s embattled Health Secretary Neil Gray is in the firing line. The Scottish Tories have tabled an amendment – which will be voted on today – calling for the ‘Limogate’ minister to step down after Gray admitted to inadvertently misleading parliament over using taxpayer-funded cars to transport him to sports matches. Dear oh dear… Gray used chauffeur-driven cars to take him to nine football games between 2022 and 2024, which the Health Secretary claims he attended on ministerial business. Yet his journey to the 2023 Scottish League Cup Final between Aberdeen and Rangers raised eyebrows after Freedom of Information requests revealed that there was

Why the SNP should form a pact with Labour

Last year, marking the tenth anniversary of Scotland’s independence referendum, I wrote an article for The Spectator looking at the state of Scotland’s political conversation and the prospects for the cause of independence a decade on from defeat.   After setting out why I thought MSPs ought to pass a budget that crossed the nationalist-unionist divide, softening the intense tribalism that has become a hallmark of parliamentary exchange, I also cast an eye forward to next year’s Holyrood election, in which no party is likely to have overall control. Recent polling trends show that Reform UK are hoovering up support from disillusioned Conservative and Labour voters alike, with Nigel Farage’s party likely to

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SNP minister admits misleading parliament over Limogate

Well, well, well. Just when the Scottish government thought it had steadied the SNP ship after two rather tumultuous years, another scandal has hit the party. Health Secretary Neil Gray is in the spotlight after it transpired that he had been using taxpayer-funded ministerial cars to take him to sports matches in the latest ‘Limogate’ development. Gray had initially claimed he attended matches in a work capacity and had minutes for every meeting – but this evening the SNP minister has now admitted to inadvertently misleading MSPs over the matter. Between 2022 and 2024, Gray attended nine football matches involving Aberdeen or Scotland using taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven cars. His attendance at the 2023

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SNP minister faces scrutiny over football expenses

Back to Scotland, where SNP health secretary Neil Gray is in the spotlight over some rather curious expense claims. The nationalist minister has come under fire after it emerged that he had been using ministerial cars to take him to sports matches – and now further questions are being raised about just how justified these trips were. Between 2022 and 2024, Gray attended nine football matches involving Aberdeen or Scotland using taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven cars. The SNP health secretary declared his excursions in line with official guidance, logging two of the games as meetings with the Scottish Football Association on the ‘social impact’ of sports investment while the other two were

What’s behind Reform’s surge in Scotland?

Five years ago, Reform UK had no presence in Scotland. Its Facebook and Twitter pages emerged during the latter half of the pandemic and despite briefly experiencing four months in Holyrood courtesy of a Tory defector, the group has since then remained very much out of sight and mind. Nigel Farage neglected Scotland during last year’s general election campaign, his deputy Richard Tice visited just once and the group still lacks a Scottish leader. Despite all that, however, Reform is shaping up to become kingmaker in the 2026 Holyrood election.  ‘Everywhere I went, people were talking about Reform. And I thought: there’s something really going on here.’  On Thursday, The Spectator revealed

The dilemma facing Scottish Labour MPs

For Scottish Labour’s significant crop of new MPs, the heady summer of electoral triumph is already a distant memory. In the days following the general election – where Anas Sarwar’s party swept the Central Belt, gaining a whopping 36 seats – it seemed Scottish Labour’s recovery was not only inevitable but already underway. In the months since that has all changed, with Scottish Labour’s popularity declining as much – if not more – than its UK counterpart. A Norstat poll in December, for instance, had Scottish Labour at its lowest ebb in three years and the SNP, remarkably, on course to once again form the Scottish Government following devolved elections

Will the SNP come to its senses on North Sea oil?

Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean

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Humza Yousaf takes aim at media in Grazia photoshoot interview

Hapless Humza Yousaf has a lot more time on his hands after he was forced to quit as Scotland’s First Minister last year. Now it transpires that the former FM has enjoyed a sit down – and photoshoot – with Grazia Pakistan’s Beauty Editor to recount his brief stint in the top job. After his fall from grace in April last year, Mr S isn’t surprised the former Scottish leader is itching for a return to the limelight. Dotted among multiple pictures of Yousaf modelling various stately poses is the ex-FM’s interview. The SNP MSP discusses everything from his political awakening, why he was drawn to the pro-indy movement and

The PMQs question that should really worry Keir Starmer

The leader of the opposition found it difficult to land her punches in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, with Kemi Badenoch not quite able to work out how she wanted to attack Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister fended off a number of issues from the Tories, from the economy to the Chagos Islands to Gerry Adams – but in the end it was a question from his own side that threw the Labour leader off balance. It wasn’t the usual soft questioning the Prime Minister might have expected from his own party when new Labour MP Brian Leishman stood up to speak. The left-leaning politician for Alloa and Grangemouth –

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Scottish Tory council leader defects to Reform

Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay has barely been in the job four months and already his party is facing defections. Mr S can reveal today that Glasgow councillor – and the Scottish Conservative’s leader on Glasgow City Council – Thomas Kerr has jumped ship to Nigel Farage’s party to represent Reform UK on Glasgow City Council. With the Scottish Conservatives already nervous about next year’s Holyrood poll, the news will come as yet another blow ahead of the election… The Glasgow councillor – who in 2023 stood against Labour’s energy minister Michael Shanks in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election – has insisted that ‘Reform UK represents the change that

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Scottish Labour face an uphill battle, poll suggests

All is not well in the Labour party. While Sir Keir Starmer’s government fends off questions about the state of the economy and its worsening poll performance, things aren’t looking much better north of the border. New Scottish voting data has dropped this morning – and Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour lot have much to be worried about… Less than a quarter of Scots say they would use their constituency vote to back Labour in the 2026 Holyrood election, while barely a fifth of the population would vote for Sarwar’s party on the regional list. The survey reveals that the Scottish Labour leader is simply not yet popular enough to persuade

The ‘self-cancellation’ trend taking over the literary world

The phenomenon that has blighted the live literature world over the last ten years could be classed as a ‘stooshie’, or ‘a big commotion’, in Scots. Indeed it feels rare for any books-based event or literary festival not to provoke one these days. The last decade has seen a huge increase in fractious warring in the world of books, driven in no small part by the use and abuse of the powers of social media by certain activist-writers. In my experience as a writer and former events organiser of two decades in Scotland, there has been a rising intolerance amongst a significant minority of often mid-career or even debut authors

Scotland has never had it so good

Thanks to the threat of independence, Scots have – in the words of Harold Macmillan – ‘never had it so good’. Scotland’s current position within the United Kingdom, in which it can hand out many social benefits to its citizens without actually paying for them strongly encourages fiscal profligacy. And why not? Who would argue against greater NHS spending, free prescriptions, or free higher education when the cost will be shared with our English neighbours?  The effective scrapping of the Universal Credit two-child limit in Scotland is the latest example that shows how the current situation benefits the country. Just last week, the Scottish Fiscal Commission published estimates of the cost for mitigating

Scotland’s safe consumption room won’t solve the drugs crisis

Quarterly reports from the office of National Records of Scotland confirm time and again the existence of an ongoing drug deaths crisis north of the border. And, time and again, the Scottish government reveals itself to be devoid of ideas for how to tackle it. Now, however, there has been a flicker of progress with the opening of the UK’s first safe drug consumption room in Glasgow this week. But will it make any real difference to the national drugs death crisis? I have my doubts. Scotland has the highest rate of drug-related fatalities anywhere in Europe. And, despite repeated assurances from ministers that they recognise the problem, there is

Katy Balls

Sturgeon-Murrell split & Scotland’s Reform challenger

13 min listen

Former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced she is separating from her husband Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the SNP. The announcement comes as the police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances remains ongoing, with Sturgeon and ex-SNP treasurer Colin Beattie under investigation while Murrell was charged with embezzlement in April 2024.  Katy Balls is joined by The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove, and data editor Michael Simmons, to discuss the separation, why the investigation is still ongoing four years later, and what chances Scottish Labour or Reform have against the SNP in 2025. 

John Ferry

The SNP’s ferries disaster isn’t over yet

The Scottish ferry, the Glen Sannox, has completed its first passenger journey, 2,610 days after it was infamously launched with fake parts and painted on windows by then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.  Unlike the staged fanfare of that 2017 event, no children were bussed in to wave Saltire flags at Troon harbour this morning, nor speeches given by any government official. This was a quiet affair, in line with current First Minister John Swinney’s strategy of distancing himself from the failings of the Sturgeon era.  In 2017, Nicola Sturgeon said the new boat would contribute to ‘Scotland’s world-leading climate change goals’. It seems it might instead negatively impact those climate ambitions Islanders will no

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Nicola Sturgeon announces divorce

To Scotland, where there is trouble in nationalist paradise. Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has this morning announced that she will be divorcing her husband – and former chief executive of the Scottish National party – Peter Murrell. The shock news was published as a short statement on Sturgeon’s Instagram story, with the SNP’s Dear Leader writing: With a heavy heart I am confirming that Peter and I have decided to end our marriage. To all intents and purposes we have been separated for some time now and feel it is time to bring others up to speed with where we are. It goes without saying that we still care

Scotland’s drugs consumption room could save lives

Being a drug addict has never been sunshine and roses, especially not on the cold, rainy streets of Glasgow. At least now there may be a glimmer of hope. From today, a ‘Safer Drug Consumption Facility’ called ‘The Thistle’ will open in the city that has been labelled Europe’s drugs death capital. Drug addicts ‘under the supervision of trained health and social care professionals’ will be able to shoot up with clean, sterilised syringes. At no point will Old Bill make an unwelcome appearance, dangling a pair of handcuffs. The caveats are that you must be over 18, sharing your drugs is not allowed, and the usual rules about indoor

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Scottish Labour admin slip-up sees party lines sent across Holyrood

Well, well, well. It’s not been a great start to the year for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party in Westminster and it seems the Scottish lot north of the border are having a tough time of it too. Leader Anas Sarwar has seen his popularity fall towards the end of 2024 while his SNP rival John Swinney experienced a slight bounce at the end of 2024. Meanwhile combined poll predictions suggest that while the reds are likely to make gains in the 2026 Holyrood election, they have their work cut out if they want to become the party of government. And now questions are being raised about just how well

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Watch: Scottish Tory leader mocks FM over Musk comments

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been the talk of London town this week and north of the border things are no different. The first First Minister’s Questions of the year has just concluded in Holyrood and, surprise surprise, the tech titan got a pretty prominent mention. In a speech on Monday, First Minister John Swinney rather bizarrely suggested that if the SNP government’s budget failed to pass next month it would play into the hands of ‘Elon Musk and other populists’. Er, right. Keen to clarify exactly why Swinney decided to throw that rather odd warning around, new Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay was quick on the attack today. Taking

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SNP government could boycott Twitter, FM warns

Elon Musk has kept the British media busy in recent days, after persistently posting criticism of UK politicians over the grooming gangs scandal – and even calling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to be incarcerated. But actions have consequences and the billionaire businessman may soon be about to see what happens when he’s deemed to have gone too far. In fact the Twitter CEO may be about to feel the wrath of the Scottish National party which, reports claim, is considering leaving the social media site for greener pastures. However will Musk cope? Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney has admitted that he is still on Twitter at the moment because

Swinney must ignore the Scottish Greens’ Trump-bashing

When Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney gave his New Year’s address in Edinburgh University’s Old College on Monday, the idea was to put pressure on Holyrood’s opposition parties ahead of the culmination of the budget process over the next month-or-so. ‘Vote for the Scottish budget or the health service suffers’ was the general gist. Yet the briefings that appeared in that morning’s newspapers included a line that ensured the media focus was largely elsewhere. Voting against the budget would ‘feed the forces of anti-politics and populism’. Who did he mean, the media in attendance asked? Can he be clear he’s talking about Elon Musk? And does he think Musk will