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The Speaker was busy at PMQs. He jumped in at the start and told Michael Fabricant, the orange-haired member for Lichfield, to stop rambling and get to the point. He admonished an SNP member for addressing the Prime Minister as ‘you.’ Convention dictates that ‘you’ in the Commons means the Speaker himself. ‘You keep saying ‘you’. I’m not responsible for any of this,’ Lindsay Hoyle said. And he jokingly called Boris, ‘Father Christmas,’ after a Tory suggested that the PM was like Santa for school kids. So there seemed to be a semblance of seasonal cheer in the chamber. And then Sir Keir Starmer stood up and read out a

The Spectator recently ran a piece by Andrew Wilson, author of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission, under the headline ‘Scotland can’t afford to remain part of the Union’. For those seeking any fresh insight into either the moral or economic case for breaking up the United Kingdom, it was thin gruel.  Instead of coherent arguments, we were offered bold and unsubstantiated assertions. We are asked to believe that the separatists’ position is ‘highly sophisticated’ and that because of Brexit, ‘staying in the Union is riskier than independence’. Any worries about the economic implications of leaving the UK single market, abandoning the Sterling currency union, losing the economic support offered by

In case you missed the memo, it’s now illegal to cross the border to Scotland unless you have a ‘reasonable excuse’ that meets the First Minister’s requirements. Nicola Sturgeon’s new law – which limits the number of people who can travel from England to Scotland – is said to be aimed at protecting public health north of the border.  Luckily Sturgeon has her close allies on standby to support her in policing this new restriction. Step forward Ian Blackford. The SNP’s leader in Westminster is so devoted to the cause that he has even taken to social media to look out for those who may have fallen foul. After a man posted

Every so often I make the mistake of thinking Boris Johnson must have exhausted his capacity for indolent carelessness and each time I do he pops up to remind me not to count him out. There are always fresh depths to which he may sink. For he is a Prime Minister who knows little and cares less that he knows so little. In happy times of placid prosperity this might be inconvenient but tolerable; these are not such times. Speaking to his northern English MPs last night, Johnson declared that devolution has been ‘a disaster north of the border’ and was the biggest mistake Tony Blair ever made. The implication,

How popular are circuit breakers? The latest Covid-19 news from Ireland would suggest support varies dramatically between the scientists and politicians. Speaking on RTE, Leo Varadkar revealed the National Public Health Emergency Team had recommended moving to ‘level 5’, which would have amounted to a ‘circuit break’ and another shutdown of the Irish economy. Pushing back, Varadkar told the national broadcaster that outstanding questions about the effectiveness of a temporary shutdown could not be answered to his satisfaction: ‘We didn’t feel it had been thought through properly. For example, we asked for some comfort that four weeks might be enough… They weren’t able to give us that comfort.’ This is

There is a satirical flowchart that sums up Scottish nationalism better than a thousand articles. It begins with the question: ‘Did Scotland do good?’ The chart branches off to the left for ‘Yes’ and the right for ‘No’. Answer ‘Yes’ and you are led to the outcome ‘proof that Scotland doesn’t need the UK’. Answer ‘No’ and you are assured it is ‘proof that the UK is holding Scotland’ back. Both branches then lead to the same end: ‘Independence’. Andrew Wilson is a walking, talking, but above all, believing version of this flowchart. In fact, it should be christened the ‘Wilson Diagram of Infinite Nationalism’. All that is good in

How does a believer lose the faith? It might begin with some quibble about a point of doctrine: the Virgin Birth, for instance. The believer struggles intellectually but cannot accept the dogma. What starts as a quibble then turns into an obstacle; as the doubt grows, the whole belief system starts to unravel. One day it dawns on them that they no longer believe. Reader, I am myself undergoing such a struggle to maintain my political faith in Unionism. I have been an instinctive, largely unquestioning Unionist ever since I became politically aware. The roots of my faith are simple enough: Scotland and England can do more together than individually.

The SNP’s determination to push on with its draconian Hate Crime Bill has put it on the wrong side of Scottish public opinion. A new poll indicates popular unease with plans to criminalise speech on everything from religion to ‘transgender identity’ if it is deemed ‘likely that hatred would be stirred up’. The Savanta ComRes poll of 1,008 Scottish adults found both generalised endorsement of classical liberal precepts such as free expression, open debate and the absence of a right not to be offended, as well as more specific concerns about the Bill itself. The headline findings are: 87 per cent of respondents agreed that free speech was an ‘important

Among the encroachments on Milton’s three supreme liberties contained in Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Bill is a cloturing of the debate on gender identity and the law. Proposals to remove medical expertise from the gender recognition process have either stalled or been shelved, but not before their radical scope prompted a lively dispute about the ethics of gender identity, sex-based rights and the freedom to dissent. That freedom will be meaningfully reduced in Scotland if the Hate Crime Bill becomes law because it is a piece of legislation that begins from the position that all legitimate debate has already concluded. The Bill creates an offence of ‘stirring up hatred’ against

What political opportunities Covid-19 has presented for Nicola Sturgeon. Day after day in recent weeks she has appeared at her press conference, presenting a picture of a Scotland where the disease has been all but eliminated – placed in contrast with England where, she says, the government is merely trying to contain the disease, and not very well at that. It is an image which, naturally, aides the cause of Scottish independence. To remind us of the game she is playing, she has several times pointedly raised, or failed to rule out, the threat of imposing quarantine on visitors from England. But is the image of a Covid death-free Scotland

On 12 May, the government stopped publishing international comparisons of its Covid-19 death toll in the daily press briefings. The argument was that the data wasn’t helpful, and perhaps even misleading: the way calculations were carried out varied country-by-country, with each nation on a different timescale when experiencing the peak of infections and death. There would be a time for international comparisons, but that time wasn’t now. Today, the ONS picks up where the press briefings left off, comparing excess mortality rates throughout Europe. The data is not specifically calculating Covid-19 deaths, but rather all causes of mortality on a five-year average. This is the metric the UK’s chief medical officer

When they come to write the history of the Union’s demise, there will be three guilty men. Tony Blair was a transformative prime minister, but he nodded through devolution after allowing himself to be convinced that it was an administrative change, rather than an unravelling of the United Kingdom. Many believe Iraq to be the blot on his legacy but contracting out the rewriting of the constitution to the Scottish Labour Party would cut against anyone’s greatness. David Cameron has no claim to greatness, but he deserves to be the toast of Scottish nationalists. The Conservatives had opposed devolution as a one-way ratchet towards separation, but once in government failed

The numbers have seldom been better for Nicola Sturgeon. Ten months from the next Holyrood election, the SNP is polling 55 per cent on the constituency ballot and 50 per cent on the regional vote. Support for Scexit has swung into the majority. Almost three-quarters of Scots say she has handled the Covid-19 pandemic well, compared to just 21 per cent for Boris Johnson. Yet in terms of the record, Sturgeon’s response to coronavirus has been at least as impaired as that of Boris Johnson. The UK Government has been criticised for its lack of pandemic preparedness despite the findings of a 2017 simulation called Exercise Cygnus. However, the Scottish

The greatest danger to the current government is the state of the Union, I say in this week’s edition of the magazine. Prime Ministers can survive many things but not the break up of the country they lead. Number 10’s position is that there won’t accept a Scottish independence referendum in this Parliament. Given that no legal referendum can take place without Westminster’s consent, this means there won’t be one. But this position will come under huge pressure if the SNP win an outright majority on a pro-IndyRef2 platform in next year’s Holyrood elections. The next skirmish between Westminster and Holyrood will be over the internal market bill. The SNP

One of the rare upsides of living in a country run by nationalists is that nationalists are not great at hiding their true feelings. When you’ve got a superiority complex, it’s hard to prevent it from bursting out, often at the most inopportune times. Efforts to explain to outsiders that the SNP isn’t actually a more left-wing version of Labour, but a strategically savvier version of Ukip may fall on deaf ears but, sooner or later, the subjects of your hand-wringing will just come out with it by themselves. On Saturday, a modest band of Scottish nationalists just came out with it in dramatic fashion on the border with England.

Nicola Sturgeon today released her ‘roadmap’ for easing the lockdown in Scotland, after the first minister decided to pursue a separate strategy to Boris Johnson when it comes to lifting restrictions on freedom of association and movement. In an announcement, the first minister said that Scotland would pursue a ‘four-phase’ route out of lockdown, with some restrictions lifted next week, such as allowing people to meet others from another household outside. But, rather unfortunately, the majority of the guidance was unavailable to read, as the Scottish government’s website helpfully crashed soon after Sturgeon’s announcement, with thousands of users unable to access the new guidance. Happily though the SNP MP Carol Monaghan

The new Hate Crime Bill proposed by the Scottish Government is a sweeping threat to freedom of speech and conscience. The draft law radically expands the power of the state to punish expression and expression-adjacent behaviour, such as possession of ‘inflammatory material’. It provides for the prosecution of ill-defined ‘organisations’ (and individuals within them) and could even see actors and directors prosecuted if a play they perform is considered to contain a hate crime. Its schedule of protected characteristics is extended beyond race (which covers ethnicity, national origin and citizenship) to include age, disability, ‘religion or… perceived religious affiliation’, sexual orientation, transgender identity and ‘variations in sex characteristics’. If the

The Scottish Government may have overreached for the first time in its response to Covid-19. Today MSPs will vote on the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill, which grants Scottish Ministers emergency powers to tackle the outbreak and suspends or amends the legal status quo in some important areas. Physical attendance in court will no longer be required unless a judge specifically instructs it; instead, appearances will be made ‘by electronic means’. Ministers will be able to permit the release of prison inmates in the event of custodial transmission (lifers and those convicted of sex crimes will not be eligible). The timeframes for community payback orders will be lengthened and public bodies will

Alex Salmond has been cleared of sexual assault following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh. The jury returned this afternoon and found the former First Minister not guilty of 12 charges and resorted to Scotland’s special not proven verdict on a 13th allegation. Salmond’s twin defences were that the claims against him were ‘exaggerations’ (he wasn’t perfect but he had never done anything criminal) or ‘deliberate fabrications for a political purpose’ (he was the victim of a conspiracy). In private, much of the Scottish political and media class already had him hanged, drawn and quartered and so this verdict is being met with a mixture of shock, horror

Polls come and go and the YouGov survey showing support for Scottish independence at 51 per cent should be read with that in mind. The Nationalists have been ahead before and have fallen behind again. What Downing Street cannot take in its stride is this: five years since the Scottish referendum, and with the SNP government in Edinburgh plagued by crises in health and education, support for secession has not fallen away. The separatists still enjoy a solid base of support, around 45 per cent, which delivered them 47 of Scotland’s 59 seats in the general election. They lost the 2014 referendum 55 per cent to 45 per cent and

Yesterday, Nicola Sturgeon unveiled a proposal to devolve certain aspects of our post-Brexit immigration policy to Scotland. Well, you might say, she would say that, wouldn’t she? But Sturgeon’s argument has some merit, for Scotland has a demographic problem that is not shared by the rest of the United Kingdom. A few thousand Scotland-only visas issued each year has the potential, assuming they proved sufficiently attractive, to address that. This is not just an SNP ploy, either. There is a widespread acceptance in Scotland that the country needs to be able to do more to attract more immigrants. On current trends, immigration is likely to be essential for the population

It was one of the defining moments of the 2014 Scottish referendum campaign. In that early August TV debate, Alistair Darling said any 8 year old could tell you what a country’s flag, capital and currency were but that Alex Salmond couldn’t say what currency an independent Scotland would use. Salmond’s floundering that night badly hurt the ‘Yes’ cause. This evening, when Andrew Neil pressed Nicola Sturgeon on what currency an independent Scotland would use, she replied the pound but without a monetary union. She indicated that this would be the case even if Brexit had happened. So, Sturgeon is saying that Scotland would be applying to join the EU

There was a fairytale quality to Nicola Sturgeon’s speech to the SNP conference this afternoon. On the one hand, she demanded a second referendum on independence next year; on the other, almost no-one in Scottish politics really believes there will be a referendum next year. In tandem with this rallying call for national liberation – an emancipation made ever more urgent by the looming Brexit fiasco – there ran another line of argument: conference delegates, like the wider nationalist movement, must be careful and canny and patient. Which is another way of saying that, whatever the headlines suggest, it’s probably not happening. At least not yet. For the last few

Scottish politics is stuck. As with Brexit across the wider United Kingdom, the 2014 independence referendum has permanently shifted attitudes of the majority of the population into Yes/No camps, with little room for compromise. The SNP government stumbles from one crisis of service delivery to another yet continues to consistently poll around 40 per cent. In first-past-the-post Westminster elections, this is sufficient to return a clear majority of MPs, and probably to still be returned as the largest party in the Scottish Parliament in the scheduled 2021 election. The problem for Scotland is that the SNP believe this to be a mandate to speak “for Scotland” in broader constitutional matters,

Happy Union Day, the fifth anniversary of Scotland’s vote to remain in the United Kingdom. It’s gotten so commercial, though at least voting No to independence means the Scots still have a currency to buy their celebratory Union Jack bunting in. Only there’s not much in the way of celebrations today. In 2014, the Better Together campaign made a big deal of an independent Scotland starting life outside the EU. Unionists don’t bring that up anymore.  Opponents of nationalism have lost their figurehead in Ruth Davidson and as well as Brexit they have been lumped with Boris Johnson, a man who polls in Scotland like veganism in Alabama. The SNP,

The departure yesterday of Ruth Davidson as leader of the Scottish Conservatives has prompted much discomfort among some pro-Union commentators. There is no doubt that she was a stunningly effective campaigner but it is an exaggeration to claim that the revival in the fortunes of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party was solely down to her. Davidson received a substantial boost from the fact that the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 redrew the Scottish political map, creating a binary division between pro-independence and pro-union forces. In the aftermath of the vote, Davidson was by far the canniest operator, ensuring the Tories were the most staunchly pro-union party. But whoever her successor

Gordon Brown has broken his silence again. The former prime minister told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the Scottish Parliament had ‘failed to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland’ and had instead become a ‘battering ram for constitutional warfare’. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped down the well? And creating a Scottish parliament to run almost all of Scotland’s affairs separately from the rest of the UK helped rather than hurt the campaign for independence? Jeepers. The battering ram that Brown laments exists only because the party and government in which he played a somewhat senior role insisted on fashioning it. At the time of the Scottish devolution referendum