Scotland

The new party of the left has got off to a pretty shaky start. It doesn’t have a proper name, its co-leaders (Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana) barely get along and already left-wing activists are trying to oust party strategists. But no matter: the group is ploughing ahead and will, it transpires, be launching its first Scottish branch next month. How very interesting… Your Party – which is not the official name of the group, Sultana fumed on social media – will launch a Scottish branch in Glasgow next month, with an assembly to take place on 5 September. In a statement, the group has said: Glaswegians are champing at

Scottish Labour MSP Colin Smyth has been arrested and charged in connection with the possession of indecent images. The 52-year-old politician – who has represented the South Scotland constituency for a decade – was taken into custody at a Dumfries property earlier this month and a police investigation has been launched. The Scottish Labour party suspended Smyth after he was charged, with the politician now an independent MSP. A party spokesperson said: The whip has been removed from Colin Smyth MSP, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further on this matter while the investigation is ongoing. A Police Scotland spokesperson added: On Tuesday, August 5, 2025, officers executed a warrant

It’s not a good time to be in Scottish Labour. With nine months to go until the 2026 Holyrood election, the party is still trailing behind the SNP and, at times, Reform UK. And things aren’t going well at a local level either: in recent months the party has suspended five councillors over inappropriate conduct and today one of these, Fife council’s David Graham, has been jailed for 27 months after the 43-year-old was found guilty for sexually abusing a vulnerable teenager. Good heavens… A by-election will be held in Fife’s Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages ward in due course – with opposition parties keeping tabs on a number of

Throughout her memoir, Nicola Sturgeon emphasises her achievement in becoming the first female first minister of Scotland. While that achievement should not be underestimated, I’m sure I’m not the only woman who wishes she made a better job of it.   In her political afterlife, as in her political life, she evades real scrutiny It’s not just her determined blind spot on the implications of self-identification for women’s rights which emerges from this memoir, but also the fact that her much trumpeted support for women, including those under attack in the public forum, seems not to extend to those who dare to disagree with her.   There is widespread recognition

When someone one day writes a true history of Scotland during the baleful tenure of Nicola Sturgeon and reflects on what brought about her downfall as first minister, ‘Isla’ Bryson might be worth a footnote but J.K. Rowling surely merits a chapter. No one has managed to articulate the opposition case to Sturgeon with the verve, intelligence and penetrating wit of the Harry Potter author.   Rowling’s review of Frankly, Sturgeon’s recently published memoir, is in many ways as brilliant as her other mainly tweeted thrusts. It is incisive and damming, outclassing her adversary and doing so with courage humour and originality. In other ways though it misses the mark, failing, as many

Well, well, well. Back to Scotland’s self-identifying ‘newspaper’, which has planted itself at the centre of a row over the delisting of a gender critical book from a national library exhibition. Women’s rights campaigners flagged concerns after The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht – a selection of gender critical essays – was removed from the National Library of Scotland’s Dear Library exhibition, after having been previously selected. The Times ran the initial story, titled ‘censorship row as library bans gender-critical book’. The National then took it upon themselves to claim this wasn’t true – insisting the National Library had ‘debunked’ accusations of censorship. But Scotland’s only pro-independence newspaper doesn’t appear to

Well, well, well. After Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes announced she was stepping down at next year’s Scottish parliament election, speculation about who could stand for her Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency has been rife. Some have suggested that Ian Blackford, the former SNP MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber and onetime Westminster group leader, could make a return to frontline politics by standing for an area he represented down south for almost a decade. So will he make the leap? When quizzed on Spectator TV about whether he would stand at next year’s Holyrood election, Blackford did not rule it out – however he remarked: ‘It would be a