A seized luxury campervan, a raid on a politician’s home and two arrests. The latest twists in Police Scotland’s investigation into how the SNP spent £600,000 of IndyRef2 donations wouldn’t seem out of place in an Ian Rankin novel. Just a year ago, Nicola Sturgeon looked invincible. Now the SNP is in freefall and Humza
For people who take politics seriously and very earnestly, such as myself, the present debacle within the Scottish National party is surely a time of great sadness and disappointment, rather than of jumping up in the air, screaming ‘Ha ha ha, suck it up, you malevolent ginger dwarf!’ and breaking open the champers. Gloating in
It was from the Northern Ireland conflict that I first learned how language – like everything else – can be warped utterly. Take the late Martin McGuinness, not to mention his still-living, libel-hungry comrades. For almost three decades they put bombs in public places, shot random people in the head and tortured others to death.
On Easter Saturday, I wrote for the Times about the victimhood of Christ, describing this as a regrettable foundation for a world religion. In online posts beneath my column came hundreds of comments from Christians protesting that I’d misunderstood the Crucifixion’s meaning, which was (they said) the ultimate victory. Triumphantly, Jesus redeemed our sins. Or
In some quarters, American enterprise is alive and well. Established in 1929 to promote consumer protection, the conservative non-profit Consumers’ Research is launching the free service ‘Woke Alerts’, which texts subscribers news of companies ‘putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas ahead of customers’. Using iconography reminiscent of adverts for those high-frequency plug-ins that ward
Although it cannot be stated publicly, Labour and the Conservatives have much common cause in Scotland now. They won’t stand down in each other’s favour at the next election; but expect ‘paper’ candidates in constituencies where one is much stronger than the other and the Nationalist is vulnerable. Wavering SNP supporters can be divided into
‘March madness’ was a tag applied with hindsight to last month’s scare provoked by the unconnected collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse. Nothing systemic there, said the wise men. But this week began with another rumble, as reputable US institutions, including State Street of Boston and the stockbroker Charles Schwab, reported large deposit
