Scotland

So what does it all mean? The first thing to bear in mind is that more than one thing may be true at the same time. This is, then, both a historic and thumping victory for Nicola Sturgeon and a mild disappointment. Historic because, after 14 years in power, Scottish voters have handed the SNP a fourth consecutive term in office; a modest disappointment because the SNP made little progress on their 2016 performance. Five years ago, Sturgeon lost the majority – albeit this was an accidental majority – she inherited from Alex Salmond and she failed to regain it this week. Doing so would have required everything to fall

It’s a funny old business, politics. The SNP’s number one target in the Holyrood election was Scotland’s most marginal seat, Dumbarton. Held by Labour in 2016 by just 109 votes, the Nationalists put everything into unseating the incumbent Jackie Baillie.  It is no exaggeration to say Baillie is a hate-figure for Scottish nationalism. She is moderate Labour, staunchly pro-Union, pro-Trident (the Clyde Naval Base is in her constituency), and was a member of the Holyrood inquiry, during which she distinguished herself with fierce, forensic questioning of both Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond. For all the damage they have inflicted on Labour in its one-time heartlands of west-central Scotland, the Nationalists have never been able

Has Anas Sarwar got what it takes to woo Scottish Labour’s lost voters? I joined the recently-elected leader of the party while on the campaign trail in Glasgow and you can read my interview with him in this week’s magazine. His analysis is that Labour was in danger of becoming part of the past for many Scottish voters. His solution is to stop talking about the constitution in an attempt to avoid the ‘divisive’ politics that has dominated the country for years now and to encourage voters to take another look at his party. He told me that the ‘big mistake that other political parties are making’ is to ‘make

Even the Americans are noticing Nicola Sturgeon now and if you are – like many nationalists – the kind of Scottish nationalist forever on the lookout for external validation, lengthy articles featuring the first minister in The New Yorker and The Atlantic is the kind of thing to make you proud. There has always been a strong streak of what I like to think of as Sally Field nationalism – ‘And I can’t deny the fact that you like me! Right now, you like me!’ However happy it might be, it cannot quite escape being cringeworthy. But there we have it; nationalism is essentially myopic and all nationalisms are alike in

Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has barely been seen in public without his chaperone, Ruth Davidson. She has accompanied him around the Holyrood elections campaign trail with such devotion that it’s unclear who is standing for election and who is the actual party leader. The pair are campaigning in Edinburgh today and have sent out these letters – pictured below – to pro-Union voters. They have also launched an ad van and starred in a party political broadcast together. Perhaps ‘starred’ is an exaggeration for Ross, who played more of a cameo role in the PPB last month, with Davidson taking the limelight. Douglas Ross has struggled to have any

The SNP’s latest election graphic will make for uncomfortable viewing at BBC Scotland. As tweeted by Nicola Sturgeon today, the campaign material features a podium branded with the slogan ‘Protect our NHS’. Looming over it are the words: ‘On May 6, every vote counts in deciding who will be First Minister’, and in the bottom-right corner a logo that reads: ‘Both votes SNP for Nicola Sturgeon’. Electioneering off the back of a pandemic that has killed more than 10,000 Scots is a bold strategy. Especially bold when one-third of those deaths were among elderly residents and your health officials transferred untested and even Covid-positive patients into care homes. But what

Holyrood 2021 was supposed to be an election for the mavericks. Alex Salmond is back from the political dead with a new party promising to lead nationalists to independence where his former party has failed. George Galloway has turned his attention to Scotland and, despite his previous pronouncements on the matter, is heading up an outfit opposed to indyref2. While Salmond has had no trouble drumming up headlines, neither has made much of an impression on the polls. That might be because their respective parties appear to be all about one man. The opposite seems to be true of Andy Wightman, who actually is one man but his campaign is