Scotland

Scotland’s Hate Crime Act has got off to a rather rocky start, to put it mildly. On Monday, when the bill came into force, renowned author JK Rowling took to Twitter to reiterate her concerns about how expressing gender critical views (namely, that biological sex is a reality) could be an offence under the new bill. Cue the pile on. And now even the Prime Minister has waded into the row. Taking Rowling’s side, Rishi Sunak proclaimed last night that ‘people should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology’ while a government source told the Mail that with the bill comes the ‘potential for seriously chilling effects on

Humza Yousaf’s illiberal Hate Crime Act is now in force and its first day has been a doozy. The SNP’s minister for victims and community safety Siobhian Brown admitted on the Today programme that Scots could be investigated by the police for ‘misgendering’ trans people. It was revealed that one-third of police officers has still not received training on the legislation. JK Rowling posted a thread on Twitter discussing a number of transgender women and stated that all of them were men. The author, who is currently out of the country, added that, if saying this represents a criminal offence under the Hate Crime Act, ‘I look forward to being

It is now exactly a year since Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, rose to the pinnacle of Scottish politics. Pretty much everything that has happened since entitles those who doubted his leadership skills, political judgment and basic competence to mutter ‘I told you so’. Even his most diehard supporters within the SNP must be starting to wonder what his leadership is all about. The warning signs were there from the start. Yousaf quickly emerged as the favourite to replace Nicola Sturgeon following her shock resignation last February. He simply wanted the job more than anyone else, and billed himself as the continuity candidate. He came under sustained attack from Kate

Would you trust this lot with assisted dying? The Scottish parliament’s record on issues of personal liberty has been pretty dire. Yet MSPs seem mustard-keen to introduce medically-supervised suicide as proposed by the Liberal Democrat MSP, Liam McArthur. His Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, published today, is the third such Bill to hit Holyrood and the betting is that this one will go the distance. I’m not entirely sure this particular parliament possesses the moral standing to legislate on pot holes, let alone euthanasia ‘Too often’, says Alex Cole-Hamilton, the Scottish Lib Dem leader. ‘Dying people are facing traumatic deaths that harm both them and those they leave behind.’ He’s not

The Covid Inquiry’s recent Scottish sojourn brought several weeks of bad headlines for the SNP. One revelation got less attention than others but struck me as more significant than most, so I wrote about it for Coffee House. That revelation was an email chain dug up by the inquiry dating from the first summer of the pandemic. It contained a discussion about which countries should be added to the list of ‘travel corridor’ nations. In one email, a senior civil servant argued for Spain to be added to the list because ‘there is a real possibility they will never approve EU membership for an independent Scotland’ otherwise. If that seems

It’s the end of another rocky week for Scotland’s First Minister. Humza Yousaf has been dealing with national outrage over the hate crime bill and remains under pressure to sack one of his closest allies in the party over an £11,000 iPad scandal. So Kate Forbes’s latest intervention is the last thing he needs. On Thursday night, Yousaf’s onetime leadership rival admitted that the SNP lacks a ‘big vision’ and suggested that she hadn’t ruled out another leadership bid. Watch your back, Humza… At a Holyrood Sources podcast recording on Thursday night, Forbes told her audience that ‘people need to be inspired by leadership’, continuing:  As much as I back

Since she stepped down from her role as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has played witness to her party’s extraordinary slump in the polls, months of SNP infighting and her own arrest as part of the ongoing police probe. But, Humza Yousaf insists, his predecessor will still campaign for the SNP in the upcoming general election. Talk about being out of touch… When asked in a ITV interview whether Sturgeon would be involved in the election campaign, Yousaf replied: ‘Oh, she definitely will — I’ve got no doubt about that.’ He went on: She’s one of the most successful politicians in Europe, she’s got a formidable track record in terms of

Scotland’s climate goals are ‘no longer credible’ and there is ‘no comprehensive strategy’ to move away from carbon to Net Zero. That is the noxious assessment issued today by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the statutory body set up in Scotland to advise national and regional government on emissions policies. Underscoring the gap between rhetoric heard and action seen, the committee delivers an almighty verbal skelping to the SNP and its carefully cultivated image as a green government. Under the SNP’s Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Act 2019, ‘the Scottish ministers must ensure that the net Scottish emissions account for the year 2030 is at least 75 per cent

Another day, another SNP spat. Humza Yousaf spent the weekend trying to drum up support amongst his core voters for his nationalist party, which is predicted to lose almost half of its Westminster seats to Labour in the general election. The main problem with the First Minister’s message, however, was that it seemed to focus on the wrong target. ‘In this election, we have the chance to finally make Scotland Tory-free, for the first time in almost a quarter of a century,’ Yousaf roared at his audience. ‘Most seats across Scotland are a straight fight between the SNP and the Tories. Let the message from our party be heard loud

In the midst of a new development in the never-ending motorhome saga, Humza Yousaf addressed a rather, er, sparse crowd at the SNP’s ‘national council’ event in Perth today. With a speech that was much longer than it should have been, Yousaf spent most of his time lashing out at the Conservatives. Quelle surprise. ‘We have the opportunity to ensure that Scotland is Tory free,’ the First Minister told his devotees this afternoon. ‘Not a single Tory MP left in Scotland. That is definitely a prize worth fighting for.’ Possibly because he knows that trying to retain all his party’s Westminster seats would be to fight a losing battle… But

Good heavens. Just when you think events north of the border can’t get any more ridiculous, they do. Now it has emerged that the director of an, er, hardcore porn project managed to secure £85,000 from government-backed Creative Scotland in January. The production, directed by Leonie Rae Gasson and titled ‘Rein’, was set to involve ‘pornographic processes’ to film in the Highlands, while research for the project included a nine-minute sexually explicit film that aims to take viewers on a ‘magical, erotic journey through a distinctly Scottish landscape’. What’s more, recruitment ads for Rein, which offered a daily fee of £270 for ‘hardcore’ acts, were advertised on the websites of

Back to the curious case of Michael Matheson and his £11,000 iPad bill. Despite desperate attempts by the former health secretary to stall the publication of a report into his behaviour — after Matheson tried to lump taxpayers with his ruinous roaming charges — the verdict is in. It has now been revealed that the disgraced ex-minister did indeed breach the MSP code of conduct.  Matheson’s rule-breaking charges come after he was deemed to fall short on parliamentary standards and for improper — to put it mildly — use of expenses. The investigation results, released today by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB), come ahead of the publication of the