Scotland

To mutilate the words of PG Wodehouse, it is never difficult to distinguish between a Scottish nationalist with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. Fury is the fuel that drives the SNP, which has been in power at the Scottish parliament for 18 years. So it is hardly a surprise that First Minister John Swinney has reacted angrily to the new deal struck between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The agreement reached between Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will increase freedom of movement, create closer relationships between businesses, and increase cooperation on food standards. These are things that the

To the SNP’s Dear Leader, who just can’t seem to keep out of the spotlight. Now Scotland’s former first minister – who is still a sitting MSP – has been accused of prioritising herself over her constituents after her declared extra earnings reveal she is earning more from her second jobs than her role as a parliamentarian. Alright for some! Alongside her £74,000 a year MSP salary, it transpires that Sturgeon has declared almost £200,000 of additional earnings since resigning from the top job as FM in 2023. Alongside her day job, the Glasgow politician has received yet another bumper sum of £76,500 for her upcoming memoir, Frankly, which is

Assisted suicide has cleared its first hurdle in the Scottish parliament, but there could be many more to come. On Tuesday evening, MSPs voted 70 to 56 to progress Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying Bill. It would allow patients to request and be prescribed lethal drugs if they are diagnosed with an advanced, progressive and unrecoverable condition which ‘can reasonably be expected to cause their premature death’. The patient would have to be 16 or older and mentally competent and, unlike Kim Leadbeater’s Commons bill, which is limited to those with no more than six months to live, McArthur’s Bill would not require that the patient be in the final stages

To Holyrood, where parliamentarians will tomorrow vote on Scotland’s assisted dying bill. Scottish Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur has put forward legislation that would allow those deemed terminally ill north of the border to take their own lives – as Kim Leadbeater’s bill for England and Wales makes its way through Westminster. But support for the Scottish legislation is waning north of the border, and now Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has announced he will not back the bill. How very interesting… Sarwar will vote against the assisted dying bill tomorrow after stating he does not believe the proposed legislation include ‘sufficient safeguards to provide the reassurance and protection that would

While Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill makes its way through the UK parliament, in Scotland a separate assisted dying bill will be voted on next week. Scottish Liberal Democrat Liam McArthur has put forward legislation that would allow those deemed terminally ill north of the border to take their own lives, with MSPs allowed a free vote on the issue on 13 May. The decision to back the bill is a matter of conscience for parliamentarians. But now, less than a week before decision day, both First Minister John Swinney and his predecessor Humza Yousaf have announced that they will vote against it. First Minister John Swinney and his predecessor

To Scotland, where some rather curious polling has been published – suggesting that after next year’s Holyrood election, Reform UK could become the largest opposition party north of the border. The Survation survey for True North projects the current party of government, the SNP, will become Scotland’s largest party – taking a third of the constituency and regional list vote and winning 58 seats – with Nigel Farage’s lot leapfrogging both the Tories and Scottish Labour to end up in second place, taking a fifth of the vote to end up with 21 seats. It’s quite the turnaround! Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour lot may be punished at next year’s poll

It’s difficult to imagine a more cautious revolutionary than John Swinney. When the First Minister was unexpectedly swept into Charlotte Square just one year ago – answering the call of a party in need of healing and direction in equal measure – few expected him to author a radical’s reset. The party of the late Alex Salmond’s braggadocio, Nicola Sturgeon’s sure-footedness and Humza Yousaf’s faltering optimism had turned, perhaps inevitably, to the reassuringly experienced veteran whose political style has been compared to that of a Blairgowrie bank manager.  When he returned to the frontline, some thought Swinney was to play the part of a political caretaker – a soothing interregnum

The countdown is on, with only a year to go until Scottish voters cast their ballots in the 2026 Holyrood election. This is why SNP First Minister John Swinney has decided to bring forward his Programme for Government – usually held in September – to today, allowing him a full twelve months to deliver on his latest set of commitments before his party’s popularity is put to the test in next year’s poll. Having taken on the top job only a year ago, Swinney has had limited time to turn his vision for Scotland, organised across four clearly-defined priorities, into a reality. The First Minister acknowledged at the beginning of

Ash Regan quit Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP government almost three years ago in protest at the former first minister’s controversial gender reform bill. Regan rose to prominence after she left her role as community safety minister over the legislation and then stood, unsuccessfully, to be leader of the party in 2023 after Sturgeon stepped down. Fast forward about six months and Regan ditched the SNP altogether, defecting to the late Alex Salmond’s Alba party. Now, the pro-independence party’s Holyrood leader speaks to The Spectator about the changing state of politics north of the border, the first in a series of special Coffee House Shots episodes in the run-up to the 2026

Another grim milestone in Britain’s elective deindustrialisation was reached today: Scotland’s only remaining petrochemical plant, Grangemouth in Fife, ceased refining crude oil after more than half a century of processing output from the Forties field in the North Sea. It was hardly a surprise. PetroIneos, the part-Chinese-owned company, announced last year that Grangemouth was to become a terminal for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imported from abroad. But today’s news is significant because nothing better exposes the contradictory state of British energy policy. Nothing could better expose the contradictory state of British energy policy Despite Britain having substantial reserves of hydrocarbons in the North Sea – approximately 24 billion barrels – the

There aren’t many politicians calling for a rise in immigration to Britain at the moment, but you can count on the SNP to be different. Today the party’s Scottish visa bill had its second reading in the sparsely-populated Commons, with sponsor Arbroath and Broughty Ferry MP Stephen Gethins spending 50 minutes elaborately making the case for its passage through parliament. Taking aim at the ‘poisonous’ Reform stance on Britain’s borders, Gethins’ speech dipped between reprimanding Labour for their lack of support and pleading with them to back his call to fully devolve immigration powers to Scotland. Neither carrot nor stick seemed to have much effect.  Giving Scotland a separate immigration

In the Scottish Borders, Earlston Primary School’s newly built campus has no single-sex toilet provision. This astonishing planning decision was reportedly made after undertaking training by LGBT Youth Scotland. It was also based on the Scottish government’s similar guidance, which one can easily assume may well be based on the same advice, so eager have the SNP been to outsource their thinking on policy in this area to activist lobby groups they generously fund to then lobby them. Yesterday, this illegality was brought to a halt, aided in no small part by the victory of For Women Scotland in the Supreme Court last Wednesday, which reconfirmed that the legal situation all

Reform UK are on manoeuvres in Scotland. Mr S can reveal today that not only did Nigel Farage’s party poach former Tory councillor Ross Lambie last month, now the right-wingers will rub salt in Conservative wounds by standing him in the Scottish constituency of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse in the June by-election – after incumbent SNP MSP Christina McKelvie sadly passed away in March. Lambie, of South Lanarkshire Council, defected from Russell Findlay’s Scottish Tories at the beginning of March after blaming ‘legacy parties’ like the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP letting down voters ‘again and again’ – and he has since proclaimed on social media that ‘only Reform UK