Scotland

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