Lucy Dunn is The Spectator's diary reporter. She is a qualified doctor from Glasgow.
Junior doctors in Scotland have been offered a 6.5 per cent pay rise for this coming year after voting in favour of industrial action over a fortnight ago. Scotland’s health secretary Michael Matheson says he is ‘delighted’ to have reached an agreement with BMA Scotland, but doctors across the country are less enthusiastic. In Scotland,
Ash Regan came third place in the SNP’s leadership contest, but the party’s ‘rebel’ candidate is still fighting hard for her policies – and yesterday she saw a glimmer of success. The SNP has announced that on 24 June it will hold an ‘independence convention’ to take the place of a de facto referendum conference
Junior doctors in Scotland want change. They want better pay, kinder working conditions and for the Scottish government to take their demands for full pay restoration of just under 35 per cent seriously. Otherwise, they say, they’ll simply up and leave to greener pastures – or hotter beaches, as the exodus to Australia continues. It
NHS waiting lists are getting longer and the government’s targets are still not being met. New NHS data released today has found that the number of patients on NHS waiting lists has hit a new all-time high of 7.3 million. The government has also failed to meet its target to eliminate 18-month waits by April
High street pharmacists in England will, for the first time, be able to prescribe medication, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced today. Minor conditions that require simple treatments may no longer involve prolonged waits at the GP – and patients requiring routine checks, like blood pressure measurements, will also be able to access these at their
The Scottish National party’s implosion brings good news for the Scottish Conservatives. At the Tories’ party conference in Glasgow, delegates had a spring in their step about their party’s rising chances. Poll results show that the Unionist parties are seeing their support gradually increase, while the SNP’s grip on power looks to be weakening, Meanwhile,
Is the truth about the ignorance of key SNP figures being exposed? Or is the party’s ‘inner circle’ even smaller than first thought? It certainly appears to have been the norm for senior figures to only become aware of party dealings after the fact. First Minister Humza Yousaf has said he didn’t know about the
Nurses in England have today rejected the government’s pay deal and have announced a fresh round of strike action. The next strikes will take place over 48 hours from 8.p.m on 30 April to 8.p.m. on 2 May, with no emergency cover. The Royal College of Nursing ballot showed that 61 per cent of eligible
Across England, around 50,000 junior doctors are currently taking part in industrial action over a long-standing pay dispute. The doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), has calculated that junior doctors have watched their wages fall by 26 per cent in real terms since 2008. Now, they are striking for pay restoration of 35 per
More keeps pouring out about the Scottish National party’s culture of secrecy. As revealed by the Times today, deputy leader Keith Brown suggested in 2021, four months after the police investigation into party finances – Operation Branchform – had commenced, that the SNP should produce a monthly summary of income and expenditure. Two key figures,
Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP and the husband of Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, was arrested at 7.45am this morning in connection with an investigation into the SNP’s finances. Murrell was later released from police custody at 6.57pm without charge, pending further investigation. Police raided the SNP’s head office this
Scotland’s cancer wait times have hit the worst levels on record, as shown by a Public Health Scotland report that was released today. Under 72 per cent of eligible patients received their first cancer treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred in the quarter ending 31 December 2022, while the target is 95 per
Humza Yousaf’s debut at First Minister’s Questions was never going to be straightforward. The First Minister’s questionable track record in government offered, to use his own words, an ‘open goal’ to his opposition. Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar was quick to point to Yousaf’s ‘incompetence’, while Scottish Conservative’s Douglas Ross belittled the new cabinet. But what
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has risked widening the split within the SNP by effectively ousting Kate Forbes from the cabinet. Having dispensed with his leadership rival, Yousaf has now appointed those who will make up his top team – and insists that his choices demonstrate a party united. But for all his warm words,
Humza Yousaf announced on Tuesday, after being voted in by 71 MSPs as Scotland’s First Minister, that Shona Robison would be his deputy. The long-term friend of Nicola Sturgeon will now help Yousaf decide who he will appoint to his cabinet, a decision that will set the tone for the next year and a half
Laughing gas appears initially to be a fairly harmless drug. It doesn’t have a giveaway smell or any obvious adverse side effects – and it’s cheap. Post-pandemic there has been a huge rise in the number of teenagers and young adults taking it: today there are more than 600,000 regular users in the UK. After the Notting Hill
It was announced to a particularly tense room at 2 p.m. that Humza Yousaf had won the SNP leadership race. The contest was expected to be close and many people assumed that if second preferences were accounted for, Kate Forbes would most likely prevail. Ash Regan’s voters didn’t quite manage to swing it in Forbes’s
Humza Yousaf has won the race to become the next leader of the Scottish National party. Yousaf defeated his rival Kate Forbes by 52 per cent to 48 per cent after Ash Regan was eliminated in the first round of voting. Yousaf has been the SNP establishment’s preferred candidate from the outset; he received the
Shortly after 2 p.m., the results of the SNP leadership election will be announced at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium. Three candidates are vying to succeed First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, though it is widely accepted that the race is really only between the two frontrunners; the winner is expected to be Humza Yousaf or Kate Forbes. While
Whatever your thoughts on the SNP, the Union or indeed Scotland, it cannot be denied that Nicola Sturgeon will leave a permanent mark on Britain’s political landscape. Whether that mark is good or bad will no doubt be the focus of intense debate for years to come. Making her 286th and final First Minister’s Questions
