Stephen Daisley

For a decade or so, GERS Day has been something of an annual gloatfest for opponents of Scottish independence. The fiscal data dump would reliably show just how dependent Scotland is on cash transfers from the Treasury to fund the embryonic state created by devolution and its sizeable estate of public service provision. As a

If there is a right-wing cultural aesthetic in America, it is low-brow resentment. The old liberal-conservative tradition prized truth, beauty and the ‘the best which has been thought and said’. This has been shunted aside by a hair-trigger populism drawn to any cultural expression that scandalises progressive tastes. If people with graduate degrees hate it,

Every few weeks I write a ‘Why isn’t Scottish Labour ahead in the polls yet?’ piece. Here is the latest instalment and the take away is: Labour still hasn’t sealed the deal but it continues to close in on a vulnerable SNP. New polling from Redfield and Wilton shows the SNP retaining its three-point lead

It’s not every day a supporter of Scottish independence is in the running for a peerage, least of all from a Tory government. So no doubt the SNP will be congratulating Mark Littlewood, who could soon be Lord Littlewood thanks to Liz Truss’s resignation honours. The outgoing director of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA)

The Conservative party has had an idea. It’s not a very good idea, but it’s an idea and those are rare for the Tories. The idea is to start banging up repeat shoplifters and other low-level offenders. Transport minister Richard Holden has complained that ‘the police haven’t concentrated enough on some of these offences’ even though ‘they

They are the words Humza Yousaf has been dreading: Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election. South Lanarkshire Council confirmed yesterday afternoon that Margaret Ferrier, the incumbent MP, has been recalled by her constituents via petition. Ferrier was elected as an SNP MP but now sits as an independent after admitting that she travelled between London and

Humza Yousaf’s government is adrift, of that there can be no doubt. The question is how much longer the drift will be allowed to continue before the SNP leader corrects course. In the four months since he replaced Nicola Sturgeon, Yousaf has staggered from one catastrophe to another. The First Minister has seen his predecessor

Scottish nationalists can sometimes be heard to say the United Kingdom is not a normal country. As evidence, they point to the unelected head of state, absence of a codified constitution and what they see as the dominance of one nation over other, smaller nations within the state. This analysis only underscores the very cultural

Ann Clwyd, who has died aged 86, never held ministerial office or high office of any kind. Unless, of course, you count a stint as chair of the parliamentary Labour party, though that is more of a penance than a power trip. She did a few tours on the opposition front bench under Neil Kinnock,

Some Conservatives are going to take heart from the by-election results. They may have lost Somerset and Frome to the Liberal Democrats on a 29 per cent swing. Selby and Ainsty may have fallen to Labour, who overturned their biggest ever majority (20,137) at a by-election. But they held on in Boris Johnson’s former seat,

After ‘it’s not happening’, ‘it may be happening, but for different reasons’, and ‘would it be such a bad thing if it was happening?’, we have finally arrived at the ‘it’s happening and it’s a good thing’ stage of the Nigel Farage banking story. This now-familiar pattern of motivated reasoning was first identified by conservative writer Rod

There’s a school of thought that, since Scotland isn’t likely to become independent anytime soon, interrogating the SNP’s claims about what independence would mean in practical terms is hypothetical and academic. This view is usually expressed by Unionists rather than nationalists, and reflects a frustration with the refusal of the constitutional question to go away.

Scotland is the drug deaths capital of Europe and changing that is going to take something radical. The Scottish government thinks it’s found that something: the decriminalisation of all drugs for personal use. Humza Yousaf’s administration has issued a call for ‘a caring, compassionate and human rights informed drugs policy, with public health and the

If you just ignore the opinion polls, Humza Yousaf’s first 100 days as First Minister have been an unqualified disaster. Yousaf eked across the finishing line after an internal election drenched in ruthless skullduggery and bitter factionalism. In the aftermath, he alienated and exiled his party rivals and turned the SNP backbenches from a North Korean military

I think it was when she described Margo MacDonald as ‘just magic’ that I fell in love with Mhairi Black. As summations of pivotal political figures go, it’s akin to a first-time Labour parliamentary candidate calling Nye Bevan an absolute mad lad. This is how Black speaks, assessing political history as if she’s talking about

The campaign for Scottish independence is at an impasse. Humza Yousaf used the SNP’s conference in Dundee to set out his party’s latest strategy for achieving statehood for Scotland. That strategy isn’t all that different from what the party faithful has heard before: keep winning elections, keep up the pressure on Westminster, and sooner or