Scotland

Thursday

Debbie Hayton

Humza Yousaf’s gender muddle

The SNP’s ill-fated gender reforms shaped Nicola Sturgeon’s last days as First Minister, but if Humza Yousaf has learned from the experience, he is not showing it. The SNP’s crown prince – or perhaps clown prince – is tying himself in knots over the sex of a double rapist who has just been sentenced to eight years. ‘Is Isla Bryson a man or a woman?’ Sky News asked him. You would think any serious contender for the top job in the Scottish government would have prepared a convincing response to such a predictable question. Not Yousaf; the best he could come up with was that Isla Bryson was ‘at it’.

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Humza Yousaf emerges on top in first SNP hustings

The first SNP leadership hustings was neatly summed up by the first question asked: ‘What will the candidates do to counter the misinformation, lies and antipathy aimed at our party on a daily basis by journalists based in Scotland?’ There was no mistaking that this was an SNP event. No political party likes the news media but Scottish nationalists are almost as much defined by their boundless, visceral hatred of journalists as they are by their ardour for independence. It wasn’t the only question to raise an eyebrow in Cumbernauld last night. Another member asked the candidates: Yousaf is every bit the machine politician that Sturgeon is; he just does

Wednesday

Anna McFadyen

Poor Scottish pupils are the worst hit by teachers’ strikes

Classrooms in Scotland are empty again today as a result of the latest round of teaching strikes. Throughout February and March, some Scottish school pupils – including myself – will lose eight days of education, a stark contrast to the national average of two. The tactic of targeted strike action is being deployed Scotland’s largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), to target high-profile politicians. But students are feeling the pressure too. One of the areas affected is Nicola Sturgeon’s own constituency – Glasgow Southside – which is home to the largest school in Scotland, as well as a school caring for pupils with learning difficulties. While targeting

Tuesday

Iain Macwhirter

The Windsor Framework isn’t the blessing Scottish nationalists think it is

Is the Windsor Framework a get-out-of-jail card for Scottish nationalists? The excitement expressed in SNP circles at Rishi Sunak’s Protocol breakthrough yesterday was palpable. For if remaining in the EU single market while staying in the UK is good for Northern Ireland, surely this could be the case too for an independent Scotland? Isn’t this the ‘best of both worlds’ scenario that Nicola Sturgeon always asked for: borderless trade with the UK after Scotland joins the EU single market? A bonanza for Scottish businesses, who would be able to access markets in Europe free from Brexit red tape? Perhaps even a ‘Holyrood Brake’ to ensure that the Scottish Parliament can

Lucy Dunn

Will Kate Forbes scrap Sturgeon’s National Care Service?

Kate Forbes has finally managed to shake off questions about equal marriage. The SNP leadership contender has been busy instead talking about Scotland’s crumbling health service – and how she’d fix it. It’s looking like Forbes, if successful, will scrap the Sturgeon-Yousaf National Care Service, back an independent inquiry into Scotland’s healthcare system and enter into considerations about the long-term future of the NHS. Will any of this help turn around a failing health service? Forbes said today during her speech at Reform Scotland’s event, a health service inquiry would be an ‘excellent idea’. She said it would look at the ‘short, the medium and the long-term future of the

Steerpike Steerpike

SNP’s solution to infighting: ban the journalists

Those cunning geniuses at SNP HQ have done it again. Fed up with Forbes, Yousaf and Regan committing news at every turn, the spin doctors at Gordon Lamb House have come up with an ingenious plan to stop their candidates’ gaffes, attacks and infighting being reported. Their solution? Ban the journalists. Brilliant! This latest wheeze was announced today following yet another Ash Regan attack on the SNP government, this time over the A9 dualling failure. A party spokesman confirmed that the media will not be allowed to attend the party’s nine leadership hustings events. They argued that: It is the members who will be voting for the next leader of

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Scotland’s bottle return scheme shows devolution is broken

Alister Jack may be about to take another stand against reckless policy-making at Holyrood. According to reports, the Scottish Secretary may deny the Scottish government’s deposit return scheme (DRS) a trading exemption under the UK Internal Market Act (UKIMA). The DRS will see 20p added to every single-use packaged drink sold in Scotland, with consumers able to recoup the money by returning their used bottles and cans to retailers or reverse vending machines.  Any drinks producer that hasn’t signed up to the scheme by midnight tonight risks being unable to sell their products in Scotland. Drinks industry and retail bodies have protested a lack of information from scheme administrator Circularity Scotland

John Curtice

Will the SNP’s chaotic leadership race ease Starmer’s path to Downing Street?

Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation has left Labour feeling hopeful. Might this be their chance to make significant gains north of the border at the next general election? Even before the First Minister’s unexpected announcement, the Scottish Labour party was already running at 29 per cent in polls of Westminster vote intentions, 10 points up on its tally in 2019. Instead of being in third place (and 26 points behind the SNP), it now occupied second place – ahead of the Conservatives and only 14 points behind the SNP. True, at that level of support the party might still gain no more than half a dozen seats at the expense of

Monday

Lucy Dunn

Is Ash Regan merely Alex Salmond in disguise?

Is Ash Regan the dark horse in the SNP leadership race? Kate Forbes and Humza Yousaf are the frontrunners, yet in a race full of surprises, Regan’s chances should not be ruled out. The 48-year-old MSP for Edinburgh Eastern resigned in protest over gender self ID. Now she has returned as the candidate for change from the Nicola Sturgeon era – but might her ties to another former SNP leader, Alex Salmond, prove to be her undoing? Regan is clear about what went wrong for the SNP under its outgoing leader: ‘Kids in the playground can see that there have been some issues in the SNP of late,’ she says

Sunday

Iain Macwhirter

Is Scotland ready for the return of Alex Salmond?

There’s a fourth person in this SNP leadership race, only he’s not on the ticket and he can’t be elected as leader. The former SNP leader and First Minister, Alex Salmond is using this chaotic leadership election to engineer his rehabilitation.  Ash Regan, the former community safety minister, who launched her leadership campaign on Friday is a Salmond protege. She echoed his call for an ‘independence convention’ to bring all independence parties together, including Mr Salmond’s breakaway Alba party. This would propel Alex Salmond back into the centre stage of Scottish politics. He would be a big presence in such a body, given his experience and history – not to

Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O'Flynn

Humza Yousaf could save the Union

At the heart of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation statement there came a moment of self-awareness that one does not often encounter among those at the top of the political tree. While Sturgeon insisted that there was majority support in Scotland for independence, she acknowledged that it needed to grow further in order to prevail. ‘To achieve that, we must reach across the divide in Scottish politics. And my judgment now is that a new leader will be better able to do this,’ she said. So it is bizarre that less than a fortnight later the bookies’ odds point to SNP members leaning to the view that the person they should turn

Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

The many missteps of Humza Yousaf

The apparently irresistible rise of Humza Yousaf, the SNP politician seen as the frontrunner to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s first minister, reveals much about the dearth of talent at the very top of Scottish politics. Yousaf is a politician with almost no discernible achievements to his name despite almost a decade in senior ministerial roles. If truth be told — cruel as it may sound — many will consider Yousaf a serial political incompetent who has made a name for himself in Scottish politics for all the wrong reasons.  Even so, Yousaf certainly takes himself seriously enough. There he was on Monday launching his leadership campaign in Clydebank, a

Friday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

It’s not game over yet for Kate Forbes

Kate Forbes’ campaign to succeed Nicola Sturgeon has been largely written off by political rivals and the media. Her Christian faith is said to make her unsuitable to lead a progressive party like the SNP and to be the First Minister of a modern Scotland. Not least her admission that, while she doesn’t seek to roll back any existing rights, she wouldn’t have voted for same-sex marriage had she been an MSP when the legislation was before Holyrood. She also believes children should be born within wedlock and is sceptical of efforts to change the law on gender recognition. Game over, say people in the know.  However, a new poll of SNP

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Can gender rebel Ash Regan win the SNP leadership race?

Ash Regan is the latest MSP to launch a bid for the SNP leadership. The former Holyrood minister, who quit Nicola Sturgeon’s government over gender recognition reforms, addressed party members and journalists at the Hilton in North Queensferry this morning. Her pitch was red meat to the rank and file, abandoning referendums as the mechanism to achieve independence. Instead, she argued, 50 per cent plus one vote for the SNP and other nationalist parties in any Scottish or UK election would be grounds to enter negotiations with Westminster for Scotland’s secession. She noted that this was once a widely-held view inside the SNP and even among some of its Unionist

Thursday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Why Kate Forbes is apologising

Somewhat inevitably, Kate Forbes has issued a lengthy apology for her rather forthright comments on moral issues in the early days of the SNP leadership contest. The Scottish Finance Secretary put out a lengthy post on Facebook in which she said: Every leader’s identity is multifaceted – I am a woman, I am a Highlander, I have a faith. Of all these characteristics, the questions over the last few days have focused on my religious faith. I feel greatly burdened that some of my responses to questions in the media have caused hurt, which was never my intention as I sought to answer questions clearly. I will defend to the

Steerpike Steerpike

Why did Humza Yousaf miss the vote on gay marriage?

With all the focus on Kate Forbes’ social views, it’s perhaps worth another look at Humza Yousaf’s own record on gay marriage. Back in November 2013, the now-favourite to succeed Nicola Sturgeon was a junior minister for External Affairs. He voted that month in favour of the general principles of the Marriage and Civil Partnerships (Scotland) Bill; however he subsequently missed the key final vote on 4 February 2014. Nine years on, he is now facing questions about why he did so. Yousaf claimed at the time that he had a prior meeting he couldn’t avoid. He wrote on Twitter: ‘Had ministerial engagement arranged beforehand but signed pledge, voted for stage one

Theo Hobson Theo Hobson

Kate Forbes and the conundrum of marriage

The fuss over Kate Forbes’ opposition to gay marriage shows that the concept of marriage has become a serious muddle. The depth of the muddle tends to be evaded, as pundits don’t generally want to admit that a basic thing like marriage is really confusing.  But it is. It’s oddly hard to say what marriage is. Does it still have a religious dimension? Or is it an essentially secular thing that only has a religious dimension if you’re religious? It’s oddly hard to say what marriage is. Does it still have a religious dimension? Or is it a secular thing? Until recently, such questions troubled no one. Marriage was a

David Robertson

In defence of the Free Church of Scotland

Recent days have shown an upsurge of interest in a small Presbyterian church (the Free Church of Scotland, colloquially referred to as ‘the Wee Frees’) because one of its members, Kate Forbes, is running to replace Nicola Sturgeon as first minister. As a former Moderator of that Church, an honorary role as an ambassador for the movement, it is fascinating, amusing and not a little frustrating for me to watch the ‘expert’ commentators get it so wrong, so often, when they discuss it.  In the past few days, some have publicly wondered if Forbes believes in dinosaurs; if she will be able to do her job on Sundays; and even

Lucy Dunn

Five graphs that show Humza’s health service disaster

Humza Yousaf has been described as the ‘continuity candidate’ in the SNP leadership race. Yousaf remains the bookies’ favourite and has managed to avoided the media storm that his rival Kate Forbes has faced following her comments about gay marriage. But Yousaf’s own record in politics deserves some scrutiny. So how has the Scottish health secretary fared in his current role? This morning, Audit Scotland released a damning report that laid bare the full extent of Humza Yousaf’s health service crisis. It urged the Scottish government to be ‘fully transparent’ about ‘what progress is or is not being achieved’, and revealed that the health service is still nowhere close to

Tim Stanley

The Union has no substance

It’s always useful to be told what we’re allowed to think. The news from the Kate Forbes leadership campaign is that you can’t make it in politics unless you swallow sex changes and celebrate same-sex marriage.  Fascinating. Especially since the former is actually very controversial – hence the backlash against the SNP’s gender ID reform – and the latter has only been the law since 2014. Even more interesting is that Forbes’ insistence that she wouldn’t try to reverse equal marriage isn’t enough. She is being pilloried not for her politics – which, in the sense of wishing to separate faith from existing legislation, is quite liberal – but for