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Alex Salmond is back in Bute House, refreshed and chippered by a much-needed holiday. If 2012 was a year in which the Referendum Guns were first deployed it was still, in the end, something of a phoney war. At the risk of exhausting an easily-exhausted electorate, 2013 should see more action. This week’s column at Think Scotland argues that the SNP need to broaden their vision and approach the campaign with a greater sense of generosity than is sometimes seen. At present they depend too heavily – in my view – on the idea that independence is a way to Tory-proof Scotland. That’s a negative, not a positive, case. Moreover

Today’s Think Scotland column takes a gander at the rumpus over an independent Scotland’s accession to the EU. Until recently the SNP promised that said accession would be automatic. Now it’s simply “common-sense”.  This is because Jose Manuel Barroso, the Spanish Iberian agent* at the heart of the EU Commission, has made an awkward intervention. Scotland would, he says, not be an automatic member of the club at all. Intuitively this is obvious just as Scotland would not be an automatic member of the United Nations. It would have to apply. Once it applied it’s application would most probably be accepted. There are few plausible grounds upon which to reject

In the rabid hamster-eating-hamster world of Scottish politics Nicola Sturgeon is a rarity: a politician of obvious competence who’s respected by her peers regardless of their own political allegiances. There are not so many folk at Holyrood of whom that could be said. The Deputy First Minister is not a flashy politician but she’s quietly become almost as important to the SNP as Alex Salmond. This, according to one sagacious owl, makes her one of the ten most interesting politicians in Britain. Hard though it is to imagine this, there are voters immune to the First Minister’s charms. Part of Nicola’s remit is to reach those parts of Scotland that

Even the cheapest, Poundland crystal ball will tell even a blind observer that Europe is pretty soon going to be a pretty hefty problem for almost all of Britain’s political parties. Almost all, I say, because that includes the SNP* whose europhilia is, in some respects, a product of a time that no longer exists. Anyway, the odds of manifesto pledges promising an in-or-out referendum in the next parliament seem to be shortening all the time. I have no idea what this is supposed to achieve since, as best I understand the matter, neither the Conservative nor Labour parties wish Britain to leave the European Union. Asking the question necessarily

So Alex Salmond has achieved the feat of becoming Scotland’s longest serving First Minister. This is a notable achievement. After all, he has avoided the fate of one of his predecessors – resigning in disgrace – and another: being defeated at the ballot box. Salmond has just served as Scotland’s First Minister for 2001 days, or five and half years, just eclipsing the term served by Jack McConnell between 2001 and 2007. But even he would agree that the field to contest this landmark is not a large one. Scotland has only had four first ministers since 1999. The first, Donald Dewar, lasted just a year before his death in 2000. The second,

Philip Hammond is one of those ministers who seems to be held in greater esteem by those inside the Westminster hamlet than those of us who live beyond its boundaries. Westminster’s natives may, of course, be right, but it is striking how often the Secretary of State for Defence prefers to cast his arguments in terms of economics rather than, well, defence. He’s at it again today. Mr Hammond is popping in to the nuclear submarine base at Faslane where he will “announce” that the government is splashing another £350m on the next phase of the mission to replace Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles. For reasons best known to himself, the

For years Scotland has been waiting to see when his luck would run out – well, now it has. Alex Salmond: gambler, tipster, political animal and First Minister now has another moniker: author of the country’s first scomnishambles. Yesterday marked, without doubt, the First Minister’s worst day in office. First, he lost two MSPs. Left-wingers Jean Urquhart and John Finnie announced they were leaving the SNP because of the party’s conversion to Nato. That decision, taken at SNP conference last weekend, has alienated many left-wingers in the party because they see it – rightly – as part of Salmond’s attempts to take the SNP into the moderate, centre ground of Scottish politics. But

It  has been a disastrous day for the Scottish National Party. Its majority at Holyrood has been cut to just one this morning after two MSPs – Jean Urquhart and John Finnie – quit the party in protest at its decision at its conference in Perth this weekend to end its opposition to Nato. Then Nicola Sturgeon gave a statement to the Scottish Parliament which led to her boss being branded a ‘liar’ by Labour as she admitted that the Scottish government has not yet sought legal advice on whether an independent Scotland would continue to be a member of the European Union. She said: ‘The Scottish government has previously

The Scottish National Party conference in Perth ought to have been a festival of ideas, showcasing solutions that only be applied by independence. Instead it has reminded everyone that the SNP is bereft of ideas*  – and why the union is not in as much danger as Alex Salmond makes out. Salmond’s speech laid into the “Lord Snooties” down south, and the “London government” which would “put this first class nation in the second class carriages.” His message – and that of his colleagues – seemed to be that an independent Scotland would have so much money that it’d be first class for everyone. Nicola Sturgeon’s speech suggested that the

With two years to go, Alex Salmond’s campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote in the Scottish independence referendum is facing a big challenge to turn around public opinion. Ipsos MORI have a new poll out today, showing almost two-to-one opposition to independence, and support for Salmond’s cause has been declining all year. This matches the findings of two other pollsters. YouGov found the split going from 33 ‘yes’/53 ‘no’ in January to 27-60 in August. And TNS-BMRB have it going from 35-44 in January to 28-53 this month. So the SNP has its work cut out — it needs to change plenty of Scottish minds if its even going to make

Here’s David Torrance with the kind of acute observation I wish I’d thought of first. There is, he writes, a comparison to be drawn between Alex Salmond and Boris Johnson: [Salmond’s] approval ratings also remain remarkably high, but then Salmond enjoys a very specific sort of popularity. Asked who best “stands up for Scotland” he wins hands down, but if voters are asked if they agree with his vision for an independent Scotland then it’s two-to-one against. So Scots like Alex Salmond, but they only like him in a particular setting. That context is the halfway house between full government and opposition otherwise known as devolution. As First Minister Salmond

Whisper it sceptically but something interesting may have happened in Scotland yesterday. It might even turn out to be an important something too. Even more remarkably, this was all because of a speech given by Johann Lamont, leader of Labour’s bedraggled Scottish troops. I know, it all sounds too astonishing to be true. Be that as it may, Lamont’s speech in which she argued it’s time for Scotland to cease living on “the never never” and admit there will, probably, soon be a choice between raising taxes and cutting services was a rare move towards reality. Lamont’s address was the kind of thing sarcastic types are supposed to call “brave”