Scotland

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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

Labour isn’t doing enough to win over Scotland

Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney began 2025 in the traditional manner – with a chorus of Auld Lang Syne. Speaking at Edinburgh University on Monday morning, Swinney called for unity across the political divide and urged opposition leaders to get behind his government’s budget. Failure to do so, said the FM, would ‘feed the forces of anti-politics and of populism’. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, however, was in no mood to clasp hands with Swinney and sing along about bygones correctly placed. As the First Minister spoke in Edinburgh, Sarwar delivered his own state-of-the-nation address, 50 miles west at his alma mater, the University of Glasgow. While Swinney was reaching

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Ex-SNP sex pest slammed after landing top charity role

To Scotland, where outrage is spreading after news that a former sex pest politician has landed a top charity job. It transpires that disgraced ex-SNP MP Patrick Grady has been appointed to a senior role at a Scottish government-funded charity – while his victim claims Grady’s actions ‘ended’ his career. Good heavens… Mr S would remind readers that in 2022, the UK parliament’s standards watchdog ruled that Grady had made an ‘unwanted sexual advance’ to an SNP staffer while ‘under the influence of alcohol’ at a pub six years earlier, where he was found to have stroked the young man’s neck, hair and back. Now the SNP’s former chief whip

Are things looking up for the SNP?

After the general election skelping my party got in the July election, I was asked by Alex Massie (formerly of this parish) if I thought the SNP was in line to get horsed in the 2026 Holyrood election. I answered in the affirmative. Unless the party changed direction, then of course we would lose. Well, things look rather different now.  Since then, the mood within Scotland’s two dominant parties has changed dramatically. The SNP is the most upbeat it has been for a while while Labour’s sense of jubilant victory after its election landslide is tinged with vulnerability. The change in mood has been apparent in almost every conversation I’ve had

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Plans afoot for Scotland Office cat

Is there room for more than one furry feline in Whitehall? Initially brought into quell the government’s mouse problem, the various departmental cats have over the years become a brand in themselves – with one of the longest serving being No. 10’s Larry the cat. Yet since Labour got into power, Larry has been the unfortunate subject of some rather negative briefings. The new Scottish Secretary Ian Murray is on the record as calling the Prime Minister’s chief-mouser ‘the most miserable animal you’ll ever meet in your life’, summing it up simply: ‘Larry the cat is a little sh*t.’ It’s a view the Labour minister shares with former PM Boris

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Salmond aided police in SNP finance probe

To Scotland, where the focus is back on Operation Branchform. It now transpires that the late former first minister Alex Salmond met and spoke with police in the probe into the SNP’s funds and finances – which saw three senior nationalists arrested and Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell charged with embezzlement. How interesting… It has today been revealed that Salmond assisted officers in their fraud investigation, with reports suggesting the Alba party leader secretly met Branchform detectives more than a year ago. The long-running probe began in 2021 over a ‘missing’ sum of £600,000 fundraised for a second independence referendum, with Murrell arrested alongside the party treasurer and the SNP’s

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Reform sack Scots organiser over terror links

Nigel Farage’s party has been having a rather good time of it lately, after winning its first five seats in the July election and continuing to gather support across the country. But north of the border, Reform has found itself in a spot of bother after its party organiser in Scotland was found to have links to terrorists. Good heavens… A probe by the Daily Record has revealed that Craig Campbell’s late father was an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) commander who was jailed after the bombing of Catholic pubs in Glasgow. Campbell’s cousin Jason was also handed a lengthy jail sentence after he was found guilty of murdering 16-year-old Celtic

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Humza Yousaf’s top five worst Covid WhatsApps

Well, well, well. It has now emerged that the SNP government will ban WhatsApp on official devices in the wake of the Covid Inquiry. The announcement from the SNP’s deputy first minister Kate Forbes came today after the publication of an external review into the use of mobile messaging apps on government devices. ‘The use of mobile messaging apps increased during the pandemic as staff worked remotely in unprecedented and difficult circumstances,’ Forbes remarked, adding: ‘Having reflected on our working practices, we are now implementing changes to the use of mobile messaging apps.’ How curious. A number of Scottish government figures endured rather embarrassing sessions at the Covid Inquiry after

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Humza Yousaf to step down as MSP

Well, well, well. It now transpires that hapless Humza Yousaf will step down as an MSP at the next Holyrood election, with the former first minister of Scotland making the announcement this morning. It comes after Yousaf spent a year in the top job before being ousted in April this year when he rather abruptly cut off his eco-activist coalition partners. Dear oh dear… Posting his letter to John Swinney on Twitter, Yousaf wrote that being Scotland’s first minister had been ‘the greatest honour’ of his life, going on about his time in the Scottish government: In government, I was proud to have significantly increased our budget for active travel,

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SNP ministers blasted over taxpayer-funded limo trips

To Scotland, where more SNP ministers are under scrutiny over their use of official limousines with First Minister John Swinney facing calls to investigate the matter. It’s not a good look for the Nats who, alongside ministerial slip-ups, have the ongoing police probe into the party’s funds and finances to contend with. Dear oh dear… It transpires that rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon took her husband to a Six Nations rugby game between Scotland and France last February as guests of Salmon Scotland. She classed the trip as official government business but due to her failure to take an official with her, there was no formal record of what was

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Scotland’s Labour voters support two-child cap, poll finds

To Scotland, where a new poll has revealed results the Nats may be rather unhappy to see. It now transpires that more Labour voters north of the border support the UK government’s two-child benefit cap than oppose it – just days after the SNP said they would scrap the policy in Scotland. How very interesting… A Norstat poll for The Sunday Times revealed that 34 per cent of Labour voters in Scotland oppose John Swinney’s move to abolish the two-child cap, while only 31 per cent support its reversal. Despite the Scottish Greens blasting the Conservative policy as ‘morally bankrupt’, the party’s voters were the biggest proponents of the policy

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Is Humza Yousaf picking a fight with GB News?

Back to Scotland, where it appears hapless Humza Yousaf is still trying to stay relevant by going after, er, GB News. The failed former first minister of Scotland is said to be considering his options against the channel after a new report into GB News suggested Yousaf would have a ‘very strong case’ if he reported the broadcaster to media watchdog Ofcom over its treatment of the ex-FM. Good heavens… The document, released by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), has slammed the channel over an ‘excessive’ focus on Muslims bordering on an ‘obsession [that] regularly demonises their beliefs’ – noting that almost 50 per cent

The SNP budget was one big letdown

Shona Robison’s big fiscal announcement this week should have been the Scottish government’s plans to mitigate the deeply unpopular winter fuel payment cut imposed by UK Labour. The nationalists went early on revealing the scheme, however, doing so a week before the budget after being pushed by some smart manoeuvring from Scottish Labour.  Anas Sarwar, the party’s leader, had stated he would mitigate the winter fuel payment cut should he become First Minister in Holyrood’s 2026 elections. This position puts him in opposition to his Westminster boss, but Sarwar needs to demonstrate to Scottish voters he can use devolution to prioritise Scottish interests, no matter what Keir Starmer might be

Are the SNP exploiting Labour woes?

13 min listen

The SNP presented their budget this week in Holyrood with the news that all pensioners would receive a winter fuel allowance and a pledge to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Questions remain about how they will make this budget work financially, but it is clear that they have one eye on the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections. How could this impact Labour north, and south, of the border? And, after a torrid year for the SNP, can First Minister John Swinney turn things around?  Iain MacWhirter and Lucy Dunn join James Heale to discuss.  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

Stephen Daisley

Devolution is shortchanging England

The English taxpayer is not the primary audience for the Scottish government’s annual Budget, but one wonders what they might make of today’s announcements from SNP finance minister Shona Robison. An extra £2 billion for health and social care, bumping the overall cost of that portfolio to just under £22 billion. An additional £800 million for social security benefits and £768 million for affordable housing, taking the total spend on social justice to £8.2 billion. Plus, £1 billion for roads, raising the transport budget to £4 billion; £355 million for two new prisons as part of the £4.2 billion justice and home affairs budget; and a boost of £158 million