Iain Macwhirter

Nicola Sturgeon handled the Covid pandemic rather well. You might not expect me to say that after all that’s happened this year, but it’s true. The former first minister was – or is – a highly effective communicator who managed to persuade Scottish voters that she knew what she was doing, even as she made

Scottish Nationalists are putting a brave face on the latest opinion poll showing Scottish Labour apparently winning the race for Westminster. The Times/Panelbase survey suggests that Labour is on course to return 26 Scottish seats at the next general election against the SNP’s 21. The nationalist are currently the third largest party in Westminster with

The Scottish National party has been through difficult times in the past, but can anything compare with this week? Nicola Sturgeon arrested ‘as a suspect’ by Police Scotland in the investigation into party finances. The ignominious collapse of the deposit return scheme; the deepening scandal of the Ferguson Marine ferries. This must be the nadir,

Nicola Sturgeon – progressive icon, feminist champion, scourge of corrupt Tories – is, almost by definition, incapable of wrongdoing. As she insisted after her arrest on Sunday: ‘I know beyond doubt that I am in fact innocent of any wrongdoing.’ It is her truth. Her MSPs agree and have, we’re told, sent her flowers to soothe

Despite calls for Sturgeon to be suspended from the party, Humza Yousaf has said today that he will not do so, telling BBC Scotland that he sees ‘no reason’ to suspend a party member who has been released without charge. Not all SNP politicians agree with him, though. Angus MacNeil, the MP for Na h-Eileanan

Given declining membership, internal divisions and the failure to deliver a referendum, it’s hardly surprising that the coffers of the Scottish National party appear to be emptying rather rapidly. The Electoral Commisson records that the SNP received only £4,000 in donations in the first quarter of 2023, down from over £90,000 in the same period

It takes mismanagement of epic proportions to turn a relatively simple recycling scheme for bottles and cans into a major governmental crisis. It takes Herculean hypocrisy to then blame it on Westminster. Scotland’s deposit return scheme (DRS), which plans to place a recoverable 20p on every single use container at the point of purchase, has

‘Dear transphobes, we have a phobia of your behaviour…Yours, Scotland’. That was just one of Police Scotland’s ‘Letters from Scotland’ campaign posters that started appearing across Scotland five years ago. Misogynists, racists and religious bigots were warned by the chief constable Sir Iain Livingstone, who fronted the campaign, that they’d be dealt with the full

Any uncertainty about the extent of the damage inflicted on the SNP by the criminal investigation into party finances can be safely disregarded. An extensive poll by YouGov suggests that those scenes of a police forensics tent outside Nicola  Sturgeon’s Glasgow home, and the arrest of her husband, the SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, have

You could almost hear the groans from Scots hard hit by the cost of living crisis when Humza Yousaf this week announced another ‘summer of independence’. The FM is promising to bring the campaign ‘to every corner of the country’, setting up ‘regional assemblies across Scotland to bring together and harness the energy of our

It looks like a textbook case of what Nicola Sturgeon insisted never happens. A transgender butcher in the Scottish borders picks up a primary school girl, takes her to ‘her’ home to ‘look after her’ and then sexually assaults her for 27 hours. Fortunately, the girl escapes. ‘Man abducted and sexually assaulted schoolgirl while dressed

Nicola Sturgeon’s sheer brass neck never fails to amaze. A politician whose party is under police investigation, and whose husband has recently been arrested, is hardly best placed to start talking about scrapping juries in criminal trials. It’s a bit like Boris Johnson, at the height of partygate, speculating about the breaking up of the

The scandalous debacle of Scotland’s ferries fiasco has rumbled on for some time. It is almost a decade since Nicola Sturgeon announced the takeover of the Ferguson Marine shipyard by the Clyde Blowers billionaire, Jim McColl. He was the preferred bidder to build two new dual-fuel car ferries for the state owned CalMac island ferry service.

Another feminist getting no-platformed in Scotland is hardly news. Poets, writers, students, academics, comedians and, of course, film-makers have become inured to being cancelled north of the border if they stray from the dogma that trans women are women. Normally this kind of thing happens in the shadows, without publicity. People just find, like the poet Jenny Lindsay, that

The leader of a governing party that seems to be spending most of its time helping police with their inquiries would, you might have thought, be a little wary of launching one of the most radical changes to the justice system in 800 years – but not Humza Yousaf. The politician who gave us the

It’s often said that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn mad, which may or may not apply to the Scottish National Party. But the deities always find it easier to punish hubris when those guilty of it turn themselves into figures of fun. And, when it comes to that, Humza Yousaf

Scottish politics has never been more febrile. If we go a day without an arrest, a resignation, a revelation about financial mismanagement in the Scottish National Party we wonder what we’ve missed. It’s probably a little like this after a coup or in a failing Latin American state. Okay, there are no tanks rumbling along

Just what Humza needed on the day of his Big Speech to Holyrood: another arrest in what has inevitably been called the ‘campervangate’ affair. This time it was the party treasurer, Colin Beattie, who was taken into police custody this morning. The 71-year-old has now been released without charge, pending further investigation. It is the