Scotland

Oh dear. Poor Richard Tice is the latest politician to have an embarrassing memory lapse. During his first trip to Scotland of 2025, the Boston and Skegness MP appeared in Glasgow this morning to reveal his party’s newest defectors. Except, er, he couldn’t quite remember their names… When he was grilled by one Scottish hack about the surnames of new recruits ‘John and Ross’, Tice couldn’t recall them. In fact, the party’s deputy leader didn’t appear to know all that much about the pair at all. ‘What are their surnames?’ the journalist pressed. ‘I’m answering policy questions,’ an irate Tice shot back. An excruciating back-and-forth ensued – during which Tice

There is little over a year to go until the 2026 Holyrood election and Scottish party selection processes are underway. This morning, two of the biggest names yet have said they will stand down at next year’s election: Finance Secretary Shona Robison and Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop have announced they’re off. ‘The decision to retire is entirely personal and I do it for positive reasons,’ Hyslop insisted to reporters today. It is unlikely that will convince cynics who suggest the pair have jumped before they were pushed. The Holyrood selection process is a chance for the SNP to sort the wheat from the chaff The duo joins a long list

Well, you can’t say they don’t try. With Europe still reeling from Donald Trump’s oval office bust-up with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, over in Scotland the SNP have piped up to make their feelings known about the American President. Never ones to miss a chance to try and stay relevant, the party’s leader John Swinney took to the airwaves to insist that Prime Minister Keir Starmer retract the invitation of a second state visit for Trump to the UK. ‘I cannot see how a state visit can go ahead for President Trump to the United Kingdom, if President Trump is not a steadfast ally of ours in protecting

Dear oh dear. Just as positive polling had lifted the spirits of the Scottish Nats, news of their membership exodus will bring them crashing down. As revealed by the august paper that is the Scotsman, the SNP has lost more than 5,500 members in six months alone. It’s hardly what you want to hear when you’ve an election to fight in a year, eh? The Scottish journal revealed that, as of 31 December 2024, the party had just 58,940 members – down from some 64,525 in the summer months. Not that SNP figures are strangers to an exodus, however. In 2019, the party had a staggering membership base totalling 125,000.

The SNP may be outperforming Scottish Labour in the polls, but the party of government still faces tough questions on its record as it approaches the 2026 Holyrood election. Today’s education attainment figures won’t help the nationalists’ argument that they deserve another chance in power – as the stats show the attainment gap between Scotland’s most and least deprived students has widened once again. The figures reveal that the number of school leavers heading to work, college or university in 2023/24 decreased from the previous year to 95.7 per cent. Despite John Swinney’s SNP government insisting it wants to eradicate child poverty and improve living conditions for the country’s poorest,

There is a perception that Scotland is a socialist basket case where a mammoth public sector is showered with English money, and I’m here to tell you that this perception is racist, offensive and… not entirely without foundation. The latest Scottish budget analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) examines public sector pay north of the border and concludes that the burgeoning bill poses a ‘fiscal challenge’ to Scottish government finances. State employees now account for 22 per cent of the entire workforce, compared to 17 per cent in England, with an annual pay bill of £27 billion. Salaries for public sector workers, whose number has increased 11 per

At long last, Scottish Labour has clearly and decisively set out its position on gender self-identification. Party leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy Jackie Baillie have now robustly stated the case that Scottish Labour supports single-sex spaces based on biological sex. Good, clear, precise messaging of the type entirely absent from the SNP leadership – and long overdue. Yet that clatter you hear is the sound of jaws dropping violently at the audacity. Shock at this astonishing volte face by Sarwar will be most keenly felt by two of his MSPs, Claire Baker and Carol Mochan, who were forced to resign their frontbench posts in the Scottish parliament when they declined to

Back to Scotland, where the Sandie Peggie v NHS Fife case has sparked outrage across the country. After nurse Peggie questioned a transgender doctor for using the female changing rooms, she was suspended by her health board. The move pushed her to bring a landmark tribunal against NHS Fife and Dr Beth Upton for harassment and discrimination. While the tribunal case has been adjourned until July, it has now emerged that Peggie could herself face dismissal over the whole thing – after being accused of having ‘misgendered’ Dr Upton by using male pronouns when talking to and about the junior doctor. You couldn’t make it up… Alongside the ongoing employment

Across the UK, NHS services are coming under increasing pressure. Hospital waiting lists are too long while A&E departments struggle with patient demand. Nevertheless, at an employment tribunal in Scotland this week, we have learned that health boards like NHS Fife can apparently afford to suspend a senior A&E nurse with 30 years’ experience and an unblemished record for months simply because she dared to question the presence of a transwoman doctor in the ladies changing room. Sandie Peggie’s remonstration with Dr Beth Upton was described as a ‘bullying’ incident by the junior doctor. However that did not deter nurse Peggie, who lodged a claim against both Dr Upton and the

To Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon is, er, not very busy. In fact, Mr S can reveal the SNP’s former Dear Leader has made a grand total of two spoken contributions in the Holyrood Chamber over the last 12 months. One was during a debate on Ukraine while another speech reminded MSPs that more needs to be done by her own government to protect Scotland’s young people. Talk about taking a back seat, eh? The former first minister may be keeping a low profile in the Scottish parliament but she has suggested, rather curiously, that she might not quit frontline politics just yet. It transpires that Sturgeon has submitted her application

With just 15 months to go until crucial devolved elections in Scotland, 2025 will be a momentous year in Scottish politics. Few leaders understand this better than Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who hopes he will be the man to end two decades of SNP dominance come May 2026.  Yet Scottish Labour has fallen down in the polls in recent months and Sarwar needs to figure out how to make his party stand out. It was therefore little surprise that he began 2025 by pledging to use the year to set out how he and his party would chart a ‘new direction’ for Scotland. ‘In each area of responsibility for