Scotland

It’s an unlikely face off: the First Minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf against Twitter/X chief Elon Musk. The pair are currently engaged in an online spat after Musk labelled Yousaf a ‘racist’. There’s never a dull moment with him at least…  The row came about last night after Musk saw a clip of a parliamentary speech Yousaf made two years ago. Speaking just after the murder of George Floyd in the US, the then Justice Secretary remarked that the top jobs in Scotland were all occupied by (horror of horrors) white people. Since making those comments, critics have used the clip to label Yousaf as a bigot — while the

What comes around, goes around. The SNP government has never been slow in condemning the Tories for a lack of transparency in the ongoing UK Covid Inquiry. So it was to Steerpike’s amusement then that Humza Yousaf and his Scottish government are now facing criticism for not handing their key messages over to that same probe. Talk about being hoist by your own petard… This morning Jamie Dawson KC, the legal counsel to the inquiry, said that the Scottish government had been asked to provide ‘all communications related to key decisions made during the pandemic’, including informal messages on WhatsApp, but that ‘no messages’ had been handed over. So much for open

With a general election – and the prospect of forming a government – now firmly on the horizon, the Labour party has no shortage of long-standing policies that it is quickly seeking to recast, review or revoke entirely.  Sir Keir Starmer’s earlier pledges to abolish tuition fees, increase taxes on higher earners and scrap the two-child benefit cap have all been unceremoniously dumped. Other commitments, such as a £28 billion per annum ‘Green Prosperity Plan’, have been significantly watered-down, while proposals for a tax raid on US tech giants have shifted to a wider review of business rates. This is, in many ways, a natural and prudent process for a

It’s a red letter day for Nicola Sturgeon: she’s finally achieved something of lasting value. For the former First Minister has managed to pass her driving test at the precocious age of, er, 53. That’s just one year less than the average life expectancy of some of her male constituents under the SNP-run health service. Impressive stuff! Sturgeon praised her driving instructor for his help, writing on Instagram that ‘It was really important to me, as a 53-year-old former FM, not just to have an excellent teacher but someone I could trust and feel comfortable with.’ So clearly not Humza Yousaf then. She added that the experience of passing her test

Scotland is stuck. This week has only confirmed it. SNP leader Humza Yousaf used his party conference in Aberdeen to announce a council tax freeze. It quickly emerged that he had done so without telling councils and without telling even his own cabinet. As his deputy admitted in an interview, the decision to freeze was agreed between 24 and 48 hours before the speech. Council tax was reportedly chosen because there wasn’t enough time to get expert advice on the impact of freezing other taxes. Councils are furious. Not only weren’t they consulted, but they are already making £300 million in cuts amid a two-year budget shortfall of £1.1 billion.

After the SNP won its first Holyrood election in 2007, foolish council leaders across Scotland rushed to sign up to what then finance secretary John Swinney described as a ‘historic concordat’. In return for Swinney pulling back from his threat to centralise education, Scotland’s 32 local authorities agreed to uphold the nationalists’ promise to freeze council tax rates. Lots of councillors swanked about, bragging about this brilliant deal. Look at us, they said, we’ve got a ‘historic concordat’. It appears that Yousaf has announced a flagship policy that he is simply unable to cost. And then reality slapped them across their faces. Swinney had stitched them up good and proper.

Humza Yousaf’s main objective at this week’s SNP conference, his first as leader, was to free himself from the constitutional millstone placed round his neck by his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon: the ‘de facto’ referendum. He has united the party in ditching that phrase, though the phoney plebiscite remains in spirit. The new policy states that if the SNP win a majority of seats at the next election the Scottish government will ‘begin immediate negotiations with the UK government to give democratic effect to Scotland becoming an independent country’. The Labour party and the Conservatives will negotiate by empty chair and, if the SNP lose seats next year as expected, will say

She’s back! It wouldn’t be a proper SNP jamboree without an appearance from the dear Leader, the self-identifying Chief Mammy of nationalist fervour, Nicola Sturgeon. As hard as she tried to claim her surprise visit to Aberdeen was not overshadowing her successor’s first party conference, Mr S wasn’t convinced that even she believed that… With her entrance to the annual conference given a hero’s welcome, Sturgeon was swarmed by adoring activists as she crowed to journalists about her ‘fair amount of electoral success’. Asked about her successor, she declared to the assembled press pack: ‘I think Humza is doing a fantastic job as leader of the party and as First

It seems the SNP’s prospects are as gloomy as the Granite City. Day one of the nationalists’ shindig in Aberdeen has already seen a range of, er, unorthodox contributions made on the main stage. It turns out that there are people madder than the SNP politicians: the party’s membership. From furious talk of ‘treason’ to a star turn from an SNP activist who recently launched a leadership bid to topple Humza Yousaf, it’s been another stellar outing for the self-identifying ‘natural party of government’. Today’s members’ discussion was focused on – what else? – independence. Lowlights included both independence minister Jamie Hepburn and Scotland’s First Minister being forced to defend

As the SNP gathers for its conference in Aberdeen this weekend, Humza Yousaf faces a sea of trouble. But worst of all for the party leader, he faces disillusion with the ‘divisive’ independence project itself, as expressed by Lisa Cameron, MP for East Kilbride, who has (uniquely in SNP history) left the party for the Conservatives. Don’t expect many to follow her path. However, she is not alone in rethinking her support for the SNP’s independence strategy. Others, like former Yes campaign strategist Stephen Noon, have been saying this week that the referendum route has become a dead end and that the SNP should revert to its older, incremental approach to

Dear oh dear. The SNP is not a happy place right now. Following yesterday’s spectacular defection from Lisa Cameron, Kate Forbes has today announced she will also be a no-show at SNP conference for the first time since becoming an MSP. Forbes, who narrowly lost hapless Humza earlier this year, plans to shun her party’s Aberdeen shindig and head instead stateside. Forbes says she has ‘longstanding engagements’ in the US, but her timing will raise eyebrows among the SNP establishment. Sunny climates or watching your party implode in the Granite City? Tough choice…. Forbes isn’t likely to be the only SNP politician snubbing Yousaf’s first party conference, senior nationalists tell