Snp

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Size of Things to Come & Unionism Needs a New Story

Recalling the collapse of RBS, Tyler Cowen suggests that Scottish independence might not be such a nifty notion: The conceptual point is simple.  If you think that the world is now more prone to financial crises (and I do), the optimal size for a nation-state has gone up.  Risk-sharing really matters. That’s a pretty widely-held view and it is not, I think, wholly coincidental that Alex Salmond discovered* the apparently unlimited potential of renewable energy at roughly the same time banking began to seem a less useful foundation for future prosperity.   Risk-sharing**, however, is at the heart of it. It was the main reason why the SNP became a

Sunday

Hamish Macdonell

Salmond sees out his rivals

Two down and one to go: that’s the score among the opposition leaders in the Scottish Parliament as the parties continue to sift through the wreckage left by the SNP tsunami last week. Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, didn’t wait long. He announced he was quitting on Friday afternoon, even before the full extent of Alex Salmond’s landslide victory was officially declared. Mr Gray will stay on until the autumn but will go then to allow someone else to start the unenviable task of picking Scottish Labour up from its disastrous performance last week. Yesterday Tavish Scott, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, told his parliamentary party that he was

Saturday

James Forsyth

The winners and losers from Thursday’s elections

After every election, the political stock exchange goes into a frenzy trying to work out who is a buy and who is a sell. Thirty-six hours after the polls closed, it is a little clearer who the winners and losers of this election season have been. Here are our selections: Winners Alex Salmond, the biggest winner of Thursday night. Salmond has achieved what the Scottish electoral system was meant to prevent, an overall SNP majority in the Scottish parliament. Salmond now has the votes he needs for a referendum on independence. Even better for him because any referendum ordered by the Scottish parliament would be legally dubious — not that

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Now Salmond can begin his battle for indepedence

After all the carry-on with the new Scottish Parliament building, they may have to rebuild it yet again to accommodate Alex Salmond’s head. Never the smallest object, it will have swelled dangerously today – and (I hate to say it) deservedly. This was his victory. Only Smart Alec can pitch simultaneously to the left and the right, and get away with it. “The SNP has become the conservative party of Scotland,” a banker friend emails from Edinburgh. “Almost every Scot I know who is a conservative in London is now strongly pro-SNP”. Salmond talks about low tax and enterprise, etc, while vowing to keep state spending up at Soviet levels.

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Team A Thumps Team B

What a year! First Fianna Fail in Ireland, now Labour in Scotland. If only all elections were this entertaining and satisfying. At long last the anti-Labour vote was organised properly. Indeed, the SNP have won a lop-sided victory of the type Labour have been accustomed to winning in Scotland, taking more than 70% of the constituency seats on 45% of the vote. This included a victory in Edinburgh South achieved with fewer than 30% of the votes. First Past the Post for the win, eh? Labour spent much of the night complaining that there was a ball and the Liberal Democrats ran away with it and gave it to the

Hamish Macdonell

Salmond’s next stop: testing the Act of Union

Fresh from his astonishing victory in Holyrood, Alex Salmond has declared his next stage is an independence referendum. This is scoffed at: technically he has no powers to do so and a maximum of a third of Scots back independence. But it’s a brave man who’d bet against Alex Salmond right now, and there are many reasons to take seriously the prospect of Scottish independence. Here are some.   1) Scotland is making a mockery out of received wisdom. A few weeks ago, Labour was cruising towards victory. When the Scottish Parliament was designed, the prevailing wisdom suggested that the SNP could never win a majority because the electoral system

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Three points from a remarkable night

This has been a remarkable election night. To my mind, there are three big stories out of the polls. First, the George Osborne masterminded campaign for a new Conservative majority is on track. AV, barring some shock, has been defeated and the Conservative vote has held up remarkably well in the English local elections. Indeed, right now the Tories have actually gained councilors in England. Add to this that the next election, if the coalition lasts to 2013, will be fought on new constituency boundaries that are more favourable to the Tories and things are looking promising for the party.    The coalition looks secure. Even after last night’s drubbing,

Peter Hoskin

Surprise, surprise … the Lib Dems are taking a battering

If you fell asleep expecting heavy losses for the Lib Dems, then you will not have been disappointed upon waking up. At time of writing, around 100 English councils, comprising roughly 2,400 councillors, have declared their results – and the yellow brigade have already lost four of them, along with 270 councillors. There’s some way to go yet, so the picture could alter, but Labour appear to making sweeping gains, while the Tory vote is holding unexpectedly firm. As it stands, the local wing of Cameron’s party has actually gained a council, along with 22 councillors in the process. Stir in the likely result of the AV referendum, and the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Salmond’s victory

When I stood down as political editor of The Scotsman five years ago, the country looked to be forever Labour – even if they called in Salmond for some Puck-style light relief. Not so now. The SNP seems to have pulled off a minor revolution. Scotland wakes to find Labour MSPs being toppled from former strongholds like Glasgow Shettleston – the city itself is now almost all SNP. The BBC say Alex Salmond is heading for a majority, and in a Holyrood which was designed to make it almost impossible for any party so to do. Salmond is already pledging that his next mission is an independence referendum. The Lib

Alex Massie Alex Massie

An Astonishing Night in Scotland

Scottish elecctions tend to be boring. Little happens. Small earthquake in Scotland, not many dead. Just for once, however, that has not been the case tonight. Labour’s dismal, depressing, you-cannae-do-anything-right campaign met its deserved end. Even so, who predicted the SNP could win FPTP seats in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire. Who thought they could win a majority of Glasgow city seats? Who foresaw their historic breakthrough in Edinburgh? Andy here’s-how-you-wash-your-hands Kerr and Tom McCabe and many other senior Labourites were toppled. Even Iain Gray only survived by 150 or so votes. Labour spent much of the evening arguing that the story was the collapse of the Lib Dem vote. In some

Wednesday

Alex Massie

The Scotsman Sees Sense

The Scotsman’s endorsement of the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives is so thoroughly, even startlingly, sensible it could almost have been written by me*. [T]here is no other credible candidate for First Minister beyond Mr Salmond. Despite his party’s apparently staunch commitment to statism, we also know the SNP leader is passionate about the role of business and free enterprise in generating jobs and growth for Scotland, within or outwith the Union. In that, he and many of his colleagues – finance secretary John Swinney is one – share the beliefs of the Tories, and we feel there may be common ground between them. SCOTLAND needs a strong First Minister

Jonathan Jones

Your guide to tomorrow’s elections

In light of ICM’s latest poll, Lib Dems might be relieved to hear that tomorrow isn’t all about the AV referendum. But it’s a meagre sort of relief: they’re facing a drubbing in the local elections too. We’ve put together a quick guide to those elections, as well as those in Scotland and Wales, so that CoffeeHousers know what to look out for, and Lib Dems know what to fear. Here it is: England The main question hovering over England’s local elections is: how big will Labour’s gains be? There are around 9,400 seats up for contention, of which the Conservatives currently hold about 5,000; Labour, 1,600; and the Lib

Monday

Hamish Macdonell

Labour are still off course in Scotland

Of all the election results due in on Thursday night, those for the Scottish Parliament may be the most significant. Labour’s Scottish base, which has been the party’s bedrock for almost 50 years, seems to be dissolving. Two more opinion polls yesterday gave details. One, in the Mail on Sunday in Scotland, gave the SNP a ten point lead on the constituency vote and a six point lead on the list vote: this would give the Nationalists 62 seats to Labour’s 51. With the Greens on course to pick up three seats according to the Progressive Opinion poll, Alex Salmond would have enough votes to hit the magic 65 he

Thursday

Alex Massie

Alex Salmond and Donald Trump

Since Donald Trump and the Birthers are everywhere today, I wonder if Alex Salmond winces at the memory of being described by Trump as “an amazing man”? I hope so. For Salmond’s role in the saga of Trump’s plans to build a golf course and, just as importantly, hundreds of “villas” on one of the more spectacular pieces of Aberdeenshire coastline was not one of the SNP ministry’s finer moments. To recap, Aberdeenshire council rejected Trump’s application to build two golf courses, a hotel and his houses on the Menie Estate (pictured above). The Scottish government, as it is wont* to do, called in the application and to precisely no-one’s

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Labour’s Secret Weapon: Stupidity

I don’t think this is a very good idea: Senior staffers in Ed Miliband’s office started briefing Scottish hacks last night that Miliband is now going to take a much more “hands on” approach to the campaign. Miliband has only made one, brief appearance in the campaign so far. But he and Ed Balls are due to be in Scotland this week to push a more strident “anti-independence” message. I suppose it’s possible that this might resurrect Labour’s fortunes but it seems unlikely. And that’s partly because Labour have run such a drab, dreary, depressing campaign. Their principle approach to policy has been to thieve stuff from the SNP and

Monday

Hamish Macdonell

Balls and Miliband to rescue Labour’s Scottish campaign…

Can Ed Miliband and Ed Balls save Labour in Scotland? The two Labour heavyweights have decided to move in to rescue their party’s disastrous campaign in Scotland — with Balls being sent up north to sharpen his party’s teeth. A desperate measure for a desperate situation: Labour has not only blown a 10-15 point lead over the SNP in just a few weeks, but now languishes some 10-13 percentage points behind. A mammoth, humiliating defeat looms. Until now, Labour has liked to portray its campaign for the Holyrood elections as a totally Scottish affair: run in Scotland, organised in Scotland and led by Scottish politicians. Not any more. Senior staffers

Sunday

Hamish Macdonell

Local hero fears complacency as Labour disintegrates

The SNP have this morning been put a whopping 13 points above Labour in the Scottish Parliament race: on 45 percent and 46 percent of the vote in two separate polls. Given that they went into this election campaign somewhere around 35 percent, this represents a huge leap giving them a near-impregnable lead in the Holyrood race. And that’s what’s worrying them in SNP headquarters. Salmond’s strategists, packed into a third-floor office suite behind the Scottish Parliament fear that – in the words of one senior Nationalist – “we have gone too early”. That Labour may now plausibly play the underdog card, and SNP votes may be inclined to stay

Monday

Alex Massie

The Sun Shines on Salmond

Severin Carrell reports that tomorrow’s edition of the Sun will endorse Alex Salmond and the SNP. This should not surprise anyone. I suspect most of the Scottish press will support, albeit with significant qualifications, the Nationalists. The most significant of those qualifications is that this is a Holyrood election, not a Westminster one. Endorsing the SNP does not require anyone to support independence it’s merely making the best of a poor job and recognising that the Nats are a more attractive choice than Labour. The press is prepared to back Salmond but only because independence is not on the immediate or even medium-term agenda. If it were the Nats would

Sunday

Alex Massie

Muckle Eck’s Big Mo

Scotland on Sunday publishes a thumper of a poll today that suggests the SNP is on course to defeat Labour and remain the largest party at Holyrood. In fact, John Curtice’s calculations have the Nats taking 55 seats to Labour’s 49. The Tories, meanwhile, slip to 14 while the Lib Dems suffer a catastrophe and would be left with just six MSPs, just ahead of the Greens with five seats. Should this poll be accurate and should the election – which is still 18 fun-stuffed days away – produce a result of this sort then happy days indeed. By which I mean, of course, not-as-desperate-as-they-might-have-been-days. Kenny Farquharson lays it on

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Burying the dead

Lockerbie is back in vogue. The Telegraph reports that Mi5 has ‘conclusive evidence’ that Moussa Koussa was ‘directing operational and intelligence gathering activities against Libyan dissidents’ and organising support for terror groups. Koussa is expected to meet with Scottish prosecutors later this week to discuss the Lockerbie bombing. Also, the Libyan rebels have pledged to assist British security services investigate Gaddafi’s sponsorship of terrorism, particularly the IRA. Anything that brings Gaddafi and his most murderous henchmen to justice will give solace to victims. But no amount of water can wash away the grubby circumstances of al-Megrahi’s release. The subtle influence of the government on the Scottish authorities has been covered