Scotland

Thursday

Steerpike Steerpike

A brief guide to Scotland’s 25 political parties

Voters in Scotland have a lively choice of parties in today’s elections to the Holyrood parliament. In all, there are 25 vying for either or both of each elector’s two votes (proportional representation, innit). As a public service and to mitigate confusion, Mr Steerpike offers this explanatory note on the Scottish political landscape. First, there’s the SNP, which is asking electors for both their votes to create a mandate for a second independence referendum. Voters who don’t support a second independence referendum and don’t want to give the SNP a mandate for one should still give the party both their votes. Because… reasons. Then there’s the Scottish Conservatives, who are

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Can Anas Sarwar rescue Scottish Labour?

When the Scottish parliament was set up by Tony Blair in 1999, it seemed as if Labour would govern Holyrood for the foreseeable future. The Scottish Tories were a contradiction in terms. Devolution was sold as a device that would kill nationalism ‘stone dead’. Suffice to say, this plan did not quite work. The Scottish National party took power in 2007, the Tories were resurrected as the new opposition and it was Scottish Labour that ended up on the brink of extinction. Now, for the first time in two decades, Scottish Labour is on the up, with a new party leader. Anas Sarwar, 38, was elected in February so has

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Holyrood 2021: Seats to watch out for

Scotland goes to the polls today to vote for 129 members of the Scottish Parliament. Polls forecast victory for the ruling SNP but there are a string of seats where the result last time was close enough to inject some unpredictability into proceedings. SNP targets Dumbarton Incumbent: Jackie Baillie (Labour)  Majority: 109 This is the seat the Nationalists want more than any other. Politically, it is a stubborn west-coast hold-out against the glories of nationalism. Symbolically, it is home to the Clyde Naval Base and the UK’s nuclear deterrent, which the SNP wants to scrap. But perhaps most important of all is the personal dimension. Jackie Baillie, the Labour MSP who

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Scottish nationalism is no better than any other kind

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

Andrew Willshire

Scottish independence isn’t like Brexit. It would be a real disaster

A sure sign of paying too much attention to politics is when the arguments of your own side begin to grate as much as those of the opposition. Currently number one in my personal sources of ennui is the frequent damning of the SNP by comparing them to Brexiteers, with their claims of self-determination, demonisation of the ‘other place’ (Westminster/Brussels, delete as appropriate), a certain unwillingness to face hard facts, and a tendency to be slightly economical with the actualité. And, of course, there is more than a grain of truth to the accusation. Understandably, the SNP would reject the suggestion. After all, it is only the rank injustice of

James Heale James Heale

Your guide to the 2021 election results

This week will see the biggest set of polls in UK history outside of a general election. Contests are under way in Wales, Scotland, London and in the various mayoral, local and PCC elections across Britain as part of a so-called ‘Super Thursday.’ But while past election nights have been met with the chimes of the BBC’s Arthur theme and a Dimbleby fronting hours of programmes, Covid means there will be no all-night television special. Whereas normally all results are in by midday Friday, this year it will take longer to verify and count the votes than it has done in previous elections. This is due to both reduced staff

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Tory strategist behind Scottish Labour’s revamp

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar is being advised by a key figure behind ex-Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson’s political brand, Coffee House can reveal. Eddie Barnes, a former spinner for Davidson when she led the party, has been helping Scottish Labour during the Holyrood campaign with messaging and voter strategy. He helped craft Davidson’s cheery, accessible image as she brought her party back from the brink of extinction in Scotland. It’s not difficult to see his influence in the way Sarwar has led an upbeat and confident campaign with attention-grabbing moments such as this dance class. Barnes works for Gordon Brown’s pro-Union think tank Our Scottish Future but has also

Steerpike Steerpike

Las Vegas resident urges Scots to vote SNP

Sunday’s anti-climactic finale looked set to be the biggest Line of Duty let-down for fans of the hit BBC series. But now one of the drama’s stars Martin Compston has waded into the Scottish independence debate and urged his fellow Scots to vote SNP this Thursday. He says that the ‘Tory government in Westminster’ some 325 miles from the Scottish border, ‘do not care about Scotland’ adding: ‘The big decisions, whether it be Scotland’s future relationship with Europe, whether it be nuclear weapons on the Clyde are best taken by the people who live here.’  There’s just one problem – Compston’s main residence is in Las Vegas a mere 4,872 miles

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories still struggling to fill hole left by Ruth Davidson

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

Steerpike Steerpike

How would Whitehall respond to wildcat nats?

The SNP wants a second independence referendum. Boris Johnson has ruled one out. So what happens if the Scottish nationalists get a majority at Thursday’s Holyrood elections? Nicola Sturgeon has indicated that she will hold a vote — with or without Westminster’s legal consent. So Mr S decided to ask the Cabinet Office and the Scotland Office how they would respond to an unsanctioned Catalan-style referendum. In response to a Freedom of Information request, both departments said that they did not hold any contingency documents outlining the UK government’s response to an unauthorised vote. (It’s worth noting too that if such plans did exist, the departments would have to say so even if

Cristina Odone

Scotland’s inspiring success story with at-risk children

I never thought the Scots were more emotionally intelligent than the English. A year spent researching children at risk for the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) proved to me that they are. As documented in the CSJ’s latest report, Safely Reducing the Number of Children Going into Care, the Scots are far more advanced, in terms of their understanding of why we do what we do, than their English neighbours. Holyrood has embraced neuroscience, enthusiastically building a social infrastructure that will support those suffering from poor mental health and trauma. Westminster, by contrast, continues to languish in the dark ages when the public would pay a penny to gawp at

Monday

Steerpike Steerpike

BBC makes a cameo in SNP election campaign

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

Kevin Hague

Independence case is built on myths, denial and conspiracy theories

Anyone who engages in online debate about the case for Scottish independence will have encountered Scottish nationalist fact-deniers and myth-spreaders lurking on social media. They are not interested in engaging in serious debate; their ambition is simply to give their side licence to ignore basic economic facts. Keen to understand the true scale of this problem, we at These Islands commissioned Survation to poll Scottish voters about their understanding of basic economic facts and their attitudes towards some widely-circulated myths. We were dismayed to learn that economic fact-denial has spread far beyond the swampy backwaters of social media and is now mainstream among Scottish independence supporters. Fact Denial The reality of

Steerpike Steerpike

Scottish Tories’ independence Twitter blunder

Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross seems to pride himself on his independence from Boris Johnson. The Moray MP quit his ministerial job at the Scotland Office over Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham and yesterday he told Andrew Marr that ‘of course’ the Prime Minister should go if he broke the ministerial code over the funding of his Downing Street flat redecoration. Douglas Ross might be getting a little too independent, in all senses of the term. But the assistant referee might be getting a little too independent, in all senses of the term. Today he participated in a photo-op with former Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who has been a constant

Andrew Willshire

Independence would spark a citizenship crisis in Scotland — and the UK

In the great debate around Scottish independence, one word is never far away: identity. ‘Who am I?’ is elevated from mere navel-gazing to expressive political allegiance. On one side are those who feel that one can be both Scottish and British without fear of contradiction, while on the other are those who feel that one crushes the other. By casting off Britishness, one’s Scottishness could flower more fully, or so it is supposed. Even so, it is something that, even in these times of performative politics, could remain between you, your God and your woad supplier. It certainly isn’t something to which an agency of the state would take much

Saturday

Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Maverick of the glen

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

Madeleine Kearns

How the SNP wrecked Scottish education

‘The politicians aren’t listening to us,’ an exasperated teacher tells me by phone. ‘There’s nothing left for us to do but get on with it.’ The despair felt by Scottish teachers is a notable shift from the anger I encountered in the staffroom when I trained among them five years ago. That was the year of the ‘PISA shock’, 2015, when Scotland performed abysmally in reading, maths, and science in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Distinguished education professors at top Scottish universities were left reeling. One such academic suggested that the Scottish government had five years to fix the problem. In response, John Swinney, the SNP’s education secretary,

Friday

Jamie Gillies

The illiberal attack on Douglas Ross over gay marriage

Same-sex marriage could not be described as a central issue in the Holyrood election, having been legal in Scotland since 2014. However, some are keen to make it one. Earlier this week, the Daily Record published a bizarre story attacking Tory leader Douglas Ross for a seven-year-old comment about marriage.  In an ‘exclusive’ exposé the Record noted that: ‘Scots Tory leader Douglas Ross would have voted against same-sex marriage in 2014 if he had been an MSP’. Ross also made the apparently heinous statement: ‘We need to recognise both sides of the argument.’ Other papers later aped the ‘revelations’, and they were even raised in a Channel 4 leaders’ debate.

John Ferry John Ferry

Scotland’s post-reality politics

When the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) uses the word ‘disappointing’ in its press release, you know things are getting serious. This week, the IFS said a ‘lack of credibility’ unites the policy manifestos of the three biggest Scottish political parties (the SNP, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives) competing for votes in the Holyrood election next week. The IFS’s David Phillips also said that, with the exception of the Scottish Conservatives, it was ‘disappointing’ to see ‘no serious attempt by the parties to provide transparent and comprehensive costings for their plans’. The Tories still got a telling off though, as did the SNP again, for underestimating the true cost

Thursday

Susan Dalgety Susan Dalgety

Is Nicola Sturgeon in for a scare in her own seat?

Political geeks of a certain vintage are still nostalgic for that Portillo moment when, at 3.10 a.m. on 2 May 1997, Tory cabinet minister Michael Portillo lost his safe Enfield Southgate seat to a shocked Stephen Twigg. A ripple of applause ran through Britain as the result was read out, turning to screams of delight as people realised the moment signified an end to 18 years of Tory rule and the dawn of New Labour. There is little prospect of a similar earth-shaking tremor coursing through Scotland next week when the votes are counted in the Holyrood elections. The SNP will be the largest party and their Waitrose wing, the