Scotland

It’s not been a great couple of weeks for Alex Salmond, has it? First there was the budget hullabaloo, then the SNP was compelled to abandon (at least for the time being) its plans to replace the council tax with a local income tax and now the leaders of the opposition parties have each confirmed that they will vote against the nationalists’ referendum bill. As matters stand, then, there will be no independence referendum next year. The Tories, Lib Dems and Labour all say it would be “inappropriate” to have an independence debate in the midst of an economic downturn. Well perhaps it would and perhaps it would be a

David Cameron’s op-ed in Scotland on Sunday this week was interesting. Not because of anything that Cameron said but because it appeared at all. It’s another small indication that the country is preparing itself for a new Conservative government. To put it another way, I don’t think SoS would have been very interested in an op-ed from Iain Duncan-Smith or Mixhael Howard. What would have been the point? What could they have said to the country that anyone wanted to hear? Not much. So Cameron’s proposals for how he would work with Holyrood are, while scarcely earth-shattering, useful to have put on the public record. Nonetheless, they are sensible, modest

I doubt many Nationalists would welcome the comparison but facts are stubborn things and the fact is that the SNP and Mr Rove have quite a bit in common. Just as Rove orchestrated campaigns in 2002 and 2004 that portrayed the Democratic party as being, in some odd sense, fundamentally unpatriotic (principally for the crime of not being Republicans) so the SNP’s default presumption is that any opposition to any of their policies is somehow an attack on Scotland itself. They are the only patriots in town. No-one else really has the country’s best interests at heart. How can they, after all, when they’re in thrall to a “foreign” power

Someone needs to tell Tom Harris MP that the “Unionist” in the “Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party” referred to the Union with Ireland, not that between Scotland and England. Equally, the fact that the Conservatives (in London) and the SNP (in Edinburgh) sometimes seem to be reciting similar talking points should scarcely come as any great surprise: the Labour party is their common enemy. True, the Conservatives oppose the Nationalists north of the border but as far as the UK party is concerned that’s a secondary front and one, more particularly, on which there’s little need for a fresh offensive this year. If, as Alan Cochrane hints, the Scottish Tories

The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian’s Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of money. Then again, it’s a pretty nifty painting (though my own tastes run a little later – to Caravaggio and Velazquez in particular). Anyway, it’s hard to imagine there being any discussion in France or Italy or Germany of the rights and wrongs of committing public money to the fund-raising effort. And while I have

Commenter Rab O’Ruglen  doesn’t have much sympathy for the crisis afflicting the Tartan press: While I have every sympathy for those who find themselves in employment difficulties through no fault of their own I cannot say I have any sympathy for the Scottish print medium whatsoever.  If you are looking for an example of a people less well served by its press than Scotland’s, you have to go to totalitarian states to find it. It is incredible that when the Independence movement has reached the stage of forming a government, all-be-it a minority one, that every single one of Scotland’s public prints is pro-Union.  Sometimes vitriolically so.  These instruments in

It’s all very well and good getting excited about the American elections. But let’s face it, they were but the appetiser before today’s Westminster by-election in Glenrothes. The Kingdom of Fife is a strange place indeed, a sentiment confirmed by the whispers we now hear that Labour have managed to hold the seat. On the face of it, defending a seat against the 14 point swing needed for you to lose is no great triumph. And yet on this occasion it is, in fact, a rather spectacular victory for Gordon Brown. True, it’s his back yard (he represents the neighbouring constituency) and both he and his wife have campaigned in

A cynic might say David Cameron has an interest in a strong SNP. After all, a meaningful Tory revival in Scotland seems as far away as ever (though it would be closer if the SNP withered away) and this being so, the Tories have an interest in seeing the nationalists win Labour seats at the next election. In that limited sense then, to vote for the SNP is, in one respect, to express the preference that Cameron, not Gordon Brown be Prime Minister. And, of course, there are plenty of nationalists who think that a Tory victory at Westminster will be Scotland’s opportunity. (More on this later). Perhaps. So, a

Notice what’s missing from this Guardian scoop? A third runway at Heathrow airport would be scrapped by a Tory government that would instead build a £20bn TGV-style high speed rail link between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. In one of David Cameron’s boldest moves on the environment, the party will today unveil plans to cut 66,000 flights a year from Heathrow by tempting passengers on to the first new rail line north of London in more than a century. Well, working on the dubious presumption that this track will actually be built (let alone that it will be delivered on time and on budget), you’ll notice that these new lines