Snp

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The State We’re In

Deficits aren’t necessarily the end of the world but they’re not your best chum either. This chart, pinched from Burning Our Money, is a handy reminder of where we are and the pickle we’re in. Worse than Spain! Worse than the United States! Worse than Iceland! Worse than Ireland! Gordon Brown FTW. Sure, in the long run we’re all dead. But we don’t have to be dead quite so soon, do we? As always, the Nordics fare very well in this sort of caper. But look too at our friends in New Zealand – a model of how a non-Nordic, English-speaking country can still do pretty well for itself. Yet

Monday

Alex Massie

Referendum Delayed: 2012 to be the new 2010?

So, it seems that dreams of a referendum next year have been dashed. 2010, once the Year of the Referendum, will now be plebiscite-free. No referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and no referendum on the Act of Union either. This my be good news for voters but it’s tough on hacks who’ll need to find something else to write about. But, for a moment, let’s consider some of the implications of this. I’ll leave the Lisbon question to one side for now and reiterate my suspicion that Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are helping, not hindering Alex Salmond, by agreeing to delay nay referendum until after the next

Sunday

Alex Massie

Dancing to a Scottish Jig? Aye, Right.

Och, David, dinna fash yersel’. The chances of Alex Salmond playing a tune for anyone to dance to next year are a good deal slimmer than the First Minister himself. His speech was, like Gordon Brown’s in Brighton, a parochial affair, designed to appeal to the lumpen party memebership, not convince anyone who ain’t already a true believer.  It was, then, absurd. But no more absurd than is the rule at this kind of gathering. Then again, it was, in one sense, a Unionist speech, albeit one cloaked in nationalist rhetoric. Public spending in Scotland has essentially doubled in Scotland since devolution (without, it must be said, doing very much

David Blackburn

Scotland the Brave

Everyone knows that Martin Luther King had a dream. It featured eloquent, high-minded ambitions about little white girls and little black girls playing together in harmony. Alex Salmond has dreams too. In an utterance that should have resulted in immediate committal, he compared Kenny MacAskill to Mahatma Gandhi, and then, with the rhetorical panache of a Scottish Judge Jeffries, told the SNP conference that he wanted to see “Westminster dangling from a Scottish rope”. As visions of the future go, capital punishment is not as appealing as Dr Luther King’s evocation of Christian brotherhood; but, in the event of a hung parliament, Salmond’s dream might be realised.     Salmond’s experience

Monday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie & the Scotland Act

Could government ministers in London have stepped-in to prevent the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi? A report in Scotland on Sunday yesterday says yes they could: Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy could have overruled Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill and stopped the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi if the case was deemed to have breached “international obligations”. Senior diplomats have insisted there was a “clear understanding” between the UK and the US that Megrahi would serve out his sentence in Scotland. The US Justice and State departments have also insisted they had been given assurances in the 1990s that Megrahi would remain imprisoned under Scottish jurisdiction. […]Andrew Mackinlay, a senior

Friday

Alex Massie

Public Spending Cuts: The Theory vs The Reality

Everyone agrees that cuts in public spending are necessary. Everyone also agrees that we could do with a better and more candid class of politician. And everyone should agree that we could do with better newspapers too. It’s budget week here in Scotland and that means there’s the chance to preview some of arguments that are going to be had at Westminster next year. So how does the Scottish Daily Mail report the SNP’s budget? With the splash: CUTS AT HOME, CASH FOR AFRICA. How charming. Apparently As SNP budget paves way for savage cuts in housing, transport and education, Salmond finds extra millions for pet foreign aid projects. You

Friday

Tim Luckhurst

Who really freed Megrahi?

Who really freed the Lockerbie bomber? The question cannot be answered by deliberately looking in the wrong place. And for the fortnight since Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, announced Mr Megrahi’s release that is what journalists have been doing, obsessively. Reporting with the pack mentality that often misdirects them, British newspapers have tried to prove that Gordon Brown authorised the release. Instead they have demonstrated only that the Prime Minister wanted Megrahi to be transferred to Libya under the prisoner transfer scheme, and that he had no power to make it happen. Granted, Mr Brown and the British Cabinet desired a result that would have appalled Americans nearly as much

Thursday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie: Why Did the SNP Do It?

Party discipline can be a troublesome thing. Especially when insisting upon it actually works against you. Yesterday’s votes in the Scottish parliament criticising Kenny MacAskill and the decision to release the Lockerbie Bomber on compassionate grounds would have had a much greater impact if members had voted their consciences, not the party line. That’s why Con Coughlin is wrong to argue that the 73-50 vote against the SNP “heaps yet further humiliation” upon the Nationalists. That a minority administration loses a vote can hardly be thought shocking. But a proper free vote – as, actually, a matter such as this should be – would actually have been of some use

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Why did the SNP do it?

Looking through correspondence published yesterday, it is clear that Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill understood immediately that they would be “left to deal with the consequences” of releasing a convicted mass-murderer. But, after Mr Megrahi had dropped his appeal, and therefore became eligible under the PTA, I can’t comprehend why the Scottish government took it upon itself to release al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, especially given the identity of the beneficiary of this decision. The 1998 Scotland Act binds Scotland to all UK treaties. Honouring the UK Libya PTA commitment would not have impinged upon the due processes and jurisdiction of Scots law, and would have shifted the public’s ire onto

Alex Massie Alex Massie

What If Megrahi Didn’t Have Cancer?

There’s still plenty, I’m afraid, that needs to be said about the decision to send the Lockerie bomber back to Libya. But, since many people think that there was a determination, come what may and regardless of circumstances, to free him let’s begin by asking how matters might have unfolded if Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi had not contracted terminal prostate cancer. Would he now be in Scotland or in Libya? Granted, this is a hypothetical but it may not be unreasonable to hazard that it might have gone like this: 1. The UK government and Libya would still have negotiated a Prisoner Transfer Agreement. 2. The Scottish government would still have

David Blackburn

The Lockerbie papers

Bill Rammell’s admission that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary told the Libyans that they ‘did not want al-Megrahi to pass away in prison’ is the bombshell the government hoped to avoid. And, together with Jack Straw’s sudden decision not to exclude al-Magrahi from the PTA to protect ‘wider negotiations with the Libyans”, this disclosure requires answers from the government. David Miliband heightened the chaos the government now finds itself in on the Today programme when he very foolishly remarked: “We did not want him to die in prison”. It was a slip of the tongue that undoes the government’s wilfully neutral stance over the al-Megrahi affair, stoking the rumour

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Cameron is the winner of the al-Megrahi scandal 

It is clear that the al-Megrahi release has damaged Labour, not least because their collective refusal to condemn, or at least have an opinion on, the release of the Lockerbie bomber has confirmed that the government is totally out of touch with public opinion. On the other hand, David Cameron has played a blinder. In stark contrast to the Prime Minister’s Trappist monk act, Cameron has led this issue, voicing considered condemnations of Kenny MacAskill’s decision, the government’s reticence and the its supposedly ethical foreign policy. Cameron writes a piece in today’s Times branding the entire affair a ‘fiasco’ and a ‘failure of judgement by the Scottish government…the British government…and

Sunday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie-for-Oil?

Pete suggests there’s little more to say about the Sunday Times story on the UK government’s attitude towards the release of the Abdelbaset ali al-Megrahi. The suggestion given by the paper – and increasingly assumed to be true by everyone else – is that Megrahi was freed for fear that keeping him in prison in Scotland would jeopardise potentially £15bn worth of business for BP in Libya. The implication is that, like the war in Iraq, it’s all about the oil. Well, we had to reach this point eventually, I guess. Nonetheless, though it’s written by my old friend Jason Allardyce, there’s a little less to the Sunday Times’s story

Saturday

David Blackburn

Libyagate: first denial, then silence now contradictions

The Times has obtained confidential correspondence suggesting that, in 1999, Robin Cook assured Madeleine Albright that those found guilty of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing would serve their sentences in Scotland. A senior US official told the Times: “There was a clear understanding at the time of the trial that al-Megrahi would serve his sentence in Scotland. In the 1990s the UK had the same view. It is up to them to explain what changed.” So how do they explain it? Kenny MacAskill claims that US officials urged him against releasing the Lockerbie bomber because Britain had pledged he would serve his serve sentence in Scotland. Seeking clarification, MacAskill wrote

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s hypocrisy over Lockerbie?

So far, Gordon Brown has refused to specifically comment on the Scottish Government’s decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to Libya.  Yes, we’ve heard that he was “angry and repulsed” by al-Megrahi’s reception in Libya, and that our government had “no role” in the decision.  But there’s been nothing on whether he actually agrees or disagrees with the Scottish government’s actions. The official excuse has been that Brown has to respect the devolution settlement and can’t comment on devolved matters.  But – what’s this? – it seems he hasn’t had a problem with commenting on another devolved matter before now: the level of health spending set by the Scottish Government. 

Thursday

David Blackburn

Delicately poised in Scotland

Despite a week of international codemnation, a YouGov poll shows that 42 per cent of Scottish voters still agree with Kenny MacAskill’s decision to release al-Megrahi, whereas 51 per cent oppose it. Channel Four’s Gary Gibbon notes that this undermines Labour’s arguments that the SNP’s decision is not backed by the Scottish working class, and that Labour will find the Glasgow North East by-election hard going. I’m not so sure. Clearly it’s going to be tight, but Labour will take heart from this poll, which also reveals voting intentions. The SNP is down 6 points to 33 per cent and Labour is up 5 to 33 per cent. It was

Monday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie & Occam’s Razor

So, I’ve got this correct, the initial reaction to Kenny MacAskill’s decision to free the Lockerbie bobmber was that this demonstrated nothing but the SNP’s provincialism. Small-toon politicians desperate to make a mark on the international stage and all that. Now we’re told that it was all just about grubby, if lucrative commercial interests and that London was quite happy to see al-Megrahi repatriated, whether on compassionate grounds or as a consequence of the Prisoner Transfer Agreement agreed with Libya. It’s possible that both of these theories to be partially true. However, if the Westminster government really did want to see Megrahi sent home to Libya, it’s quite possible that

Thursday

Alex Massie

Lockerbie Decision: The Backlash Begins

I was wrong. I argued that people can disagree in good faith on the question as to whether Kenny MacAskill was correct to let Abdebaset Ali al-Megrahi return to Libya to die. I should hav known better. Those who think the decision mistaken appear to believe there are no reasons – none! – to support taking a different view. Douglas Carswell, for instance, thinks it awful that a lack of compassion (on Megrahi’s part) should be met by a degree of compassion (on the part of the Scottish legal system). That’s a valid point, but it’s equally valid to note that our justice system is not in fact predicated upon

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Sending the Lockerbie Bomber Home

I could have done without Kenny MacAskill talking quite so much about our values “as a people”, if only because, as Fraser writes, we actually often do insist that prisoners die in jail. That though, is really an argument for showing a degree of compassion more often, not for denying it in this instance, no matter the ghastliness of the cime for which Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted. Nonetheless, on balance, I thought MacAskill’s justification of his decision to release Megrahi so that he may die at home and in the company of his family, was about as good as could have been expected given both the circumstances and the

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Latest Lockerbie Conspiracy: Megrahi is an SNP Agent!

Well, sort of. If one only paid attention to what Hillary Clinton or (some of) the relatives of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing said, you might gain the false impression that his possible release (or transfer to a Libyan jail) was some kind of admission that he is in fact innocent. It’s important to remember that this is not the case. If – or possibly when – Abdebaset Ali al-Megrahi is released, it will be on the compassionate grounds that he is a dying man whose cancer is inoperable and terminal. It is not an act of clemency* pardon or commutation. Even so, one can see why such a