Scotland

Few modern politicians can claim to have changed their country, and fewer still can claim to have saved it. One who can is the late Alistair Darling. This is not a reference to his role as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the 2008/09 global financial crisis, but rather his role as the political leader of the Better Together campaign during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. With a relentless focus on the economic risks of independence, it was Darling, perhaps more than anyone else, who shaped the arguments that would, ultimately, keep the United Kingdom together.  Of course, Darling’s opposition to Scottish independence was multifaceted. Like all his politics, it came

Alistair Darling was one of the most consequential politicians of the past half-century but he had the misfortune to be a quiet, self-effacing man and so the scale of his contributions has never been recognised. He was not by nature a Westminster man, not someone who lived for briefings and gossip and the soap opera stuff. He courted journalists who had to be courted, met with City figures who had to be met, but it was never about the game for him, and not even the players, but about the results.  There was an austerity about his demeanour – to certain London commentators he was just another dour Scot –

More trouble for Humza Yousaf’s beleaguered Health Secretary Michael Matheson. A new poll for STV News shows 61 per cent of Scots think he should resign over the £11,000 bill in data charges racked up on his parliamentary iPad during a family holiday to Morocco.  The bill was covered by the taxpayer out of a combination of Matheson’s office expenses and the Scottish parliament’s coffers. He originally professed ignorance as to how the charges were incurred but says his teenage sons later admitted to using the taxpayer-funded data to watch football matches. The minister subsequently agreed to reimburse the parliament in full.  Yousaf’s leadership has already been overshadowed by rows (gender reform,

As the general election approaches, Scottish Labour are taking their battle positions. Douglas Alexander, former cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has been selected as the candidate for East Lothian. Kirsty McNeill, former special adviser to Brown while he was in No. 10, has been selected as the next candidate for Midlothian. But undoubtedly the pick of the battles is in East Renfrewshire where party members have selected Blair McDougall, head of the ‘Better Together’ campaign in 2014, to stand against Kirsten Oswald, the current SNP chair. Talk about a referendum rerun… The first is likely to be Scotland’s most intense skirmish in next year’s contest. Oswald is one

It’s another week of rancour and recrimination in the SNP’s unhappy family. Today it’s the turn of rebel backbencher Fergus Ewing. Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland this morning, the born-and-bred nationalist hit out at his own party’s ’somewhat cack-handed’ handling of their proposed council tax freeze, bemoaning how there ‘was no proper consultation with our colleagues in local government.’ Talk about cracks in the once-impregnable SNP front…  It comes three weeks before the Scottish government is due to unveil its winter budget. With money tight and the polls plummeting, Humza Yousaf’s bungling band of bureaucrats has stumbled on the answer: blame the Tories. Yousaf’s deputy Shona Robison was out on

The former First Minister, Alex Salmond, is to sue Nicola Sturgeon and her former civil servants for ‘misfeasance’. In court documents today he accuses her and her officials of having ‘conducted themselves improperly, in bad faith and beyond their powers with the intention of injuring Mr Salmond’. The surprise is that it has taken him so long.   It is nearly four years since Salmond won his judicial review against the Scottish government over its mishandling of claims of sexual misconduct. Judges in the Court of Session, Scotland’s highest civil court, ruled in January 2019 that the Scottish government’s investigation into the allegations, overseen by the then-permanent secretary, Leslie Evans, had been ‘unlawful’ and

Uh oh. It’s not looking good for Scotland’s health secretary Michael Matheson. During a rather tearful speech in the Chamber last week, Matheson revealed that he had referred himself to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body for an external review. While this temporarily halted press enquiries into the details, the referral isn’t the safety net Matheson desperately needs. For now it turns out that the SPCB wants to investigate him further. So far it’s only taken Holyrood 10 months to act… However, the watchdog won’t be looking into the porkies Matheson told the press last week — namely, denying his iPad had been used for personal activities when he knew it

Matters of war and peace are not devolved, but they have nevertheless become the most powerful weapon in the SNP’s armoury as it seeks to fight back against a resurgent Scottish Labour party. Of course, given the nationalists’ record of misjudgement and appeasement in foreign policy, it is perhaps little surprise to see its motion to the Scottish parliament on Tuesday supporting an immediate, condition-free ceasefire. By supporting an immediate ceasefire, the SNP has put Scottish Labour – bullish after its victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election – and particularly its leader, in a difficult spot. There is no doubt the motion is also good domestic politics for the

If you can’t fix a problem, pretend it never existed. That seems to be the logic of SNP MP Alyn Smith at least. Speaking at ‘The Breakup of Britain’ conference this weekend, the Stirling MP appeared to suggest to his audience that Scotland’s ferries scandal is, er, not actually a priority for the people of Scotland. Smith told the distinctly silver crowd that: I knocked the best part of 200 doors this morning. Actually talking to people out there in the real world who want some hope, who want to know that politics isn’t all about WhatsApp messages, iPads and ferries. It’s about bigger stuff than that. It’s about dealing

When it comes to pomposity, nobody in Scottish politics can compete with SNP president Mike Russell. A great comic archetype in the tradition of Captain Mainwairing or Hyacinth Bucket, Russell combines a thwocking great dollop of self regard with a devastating lack of self-awareness. As such, it was hardly surprising to see Russell clamber up on his high horse when it came to the matter of an expenses claim for £11,000 of mobile data lodged by Scottish Health Secretary, Michael Matheson. Isn’t the real damage caused by dishonest politicians? After the Scottish Conservatives highlighted details of the amount run up by Matheson during a week-long family holiday in Morocco last

Another day, another tech-related scandal for the SNP. Health secretary Michael Matheson has come under fire for running up a whopping £11,000 bill on his iPad in roaming charges — and initially being prepared to let the taxpayer pick up the bill. Today he gave a lengthy speech explaining himself to the Scottish parliament. He repeatedly choked back tears as he fought to save his career… He told MSPs that ‘the simple truth’ is that his teenage sons had used his parliamentary device to stream football matches — a fact Matheson claims he was only made aware of by his wife last Thursday evening. Having to stop a number of

Another day, another financial catastrophe for the SNP. This time it concerns the recent Rutherglen by-election, which saw the nationalists lose the Westminster seat to Labour in a humiliating defeat. But the by-election wasn’t the only embarrassing loss facing the Nats: their party bank balance took a hit too. It transpires that the SNP spent many thousands of pounds more on their campaign than their competitors. Talk about adding insult to injury… First Minister Humza Yousaf’s party spent £96,000 on their failed by-election campaign, which amounted to a staggering £14,000 more than Scottish Labour. ‘What were they spending their money on?’ laughed one Labour canvasser. ‘They were nowhere to be

Well, well, well. It may have been seven years since David Cameron was last involved in frontline politics, but he’s certainly not forgotten the skill of a political interview. Quizzed this evening by BBC political editor Chris Mason, Cameron managed to, er, dodge just about every question he was asked when it came to the Greensill scandal. Two years ago, Cameron made approximately £8.2 million promoting finance business Greensill Capital, which later collapsed as criminal inquiries into its alleged fraud began. Prior to the company’s collapse, Cameron had intensively lobbied civil servants in 2020 to allow Greensill to lend up to £10 billion in emergency Covid loans. But when quizzed

Today, on Remembrance Day, wreaths will be laid to remember the fallen at 11am at the Stone of Remembrance. It follows the firing of Edinburgh Castle’s One O’clock Gun at 11am yesterday on Armistice Day. In London, there was a firing of guns from Horse Guards Parade and a procession past the Cenotaph. Last Remembrance Day, Nicola Sturgeon lead a wreath outside Edinburgh City Chambers. Humza Yousaf will likely do the same this morning. The history of Scotland and England is one of shared war. It’s only relatively recently, then, that Scots have fought alongside the English, playing a major role in the British army. The union came through war and conquest.

This week, the Welsh parliament announced that it ‘condemns the Israeli Government’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza’ and ‘calls on the international community to…bring pressure to bear on the Israeli Government to end the siege of Gaza which contravenes international law and the basic human rights of Palestinian civilians’. Those were the terms of a motion laid by Plaid Cymru and passed by Members of the Senedd by 24 to 19, with 13 abstentions. The motion was not entirely without merit: it condemned Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians and called for the hostages to be released. But this story nonetheless offers a signal from the devolution crisis that no one in