Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
Signs of the enervating weakness of the west’s governing elites aren’t that hard to find but the case of the Winter Olympics may be the most demeaning. The UK and Canada have followed the US and Australia in announcing a diplomatic boycott of February’s games in Beijing over China’s human rights record. It’s a crushing blow
Sir Keir Starmer has rarely enjoyed such good press as he’s received for overhauling his frontbench. His Centrist Dad reshuffle saw promotions for soft-left pin-ups like Yvette Cooper, David Lammy, Wes Streeting and Lucy Powell, while Corbynista Cat Smith got told to clear her desk. It was a pitch-perfect signal to Labour moderates that they were
There was an exchange in the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon that ought to be a scandal but won’t. It ought to be a scandal because it involves a Cabinet minister undertaking to do something that, in any other context, would bring waves of condemnation from across the House. It won’t because the scandalous
Anyone who thought the jury’s verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case might prompt some reflection among the political and media classes will have been rudely disabused over the last five days. The teenager was convicted in the court of elite opinion long before he set foot in the Kenosha County Courthouse and that sentence isn’t
It’s been a rough old week for Hamas. The UK announced plans to proscribe the organisation, Justin Bieber ignored its call to cancel his 2022 concert in Tel Aviv, and even the recently friendly Labour party has vowed that it ‘does not and will not support BDS’. One minute, you’re going about your business, trying
Back when the West was still pretending to fight the ‘war on terror’, Martin Amis made an observation about the enemy’s tactics: Suicide-mass murder is more than terrorism: it is horrorism. It is a maximum malevolence. The suicide-mass murderer asks his prospective victims to contemplate their fellow human being with a completely new order of
At the risk of talking down a good, old-fashioned political scandal, suggestions that Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross has become embroiled in the Westminster sleaze row deserve a sizeable question mark over them. The Moray MP referred himself to the parliamentary standards commissioner after failing to declare income. Given the scrutiny that other Tory MPs
There is a sentence in the latest BBC report on English Channel migrant crossings that is just exquisite. Thursday saw 1,000 people arrive in Britain unauthorised — a new record — and the story on the Corporation’s website explains how UK Border Force boats, as well as lifeboats, ferried the arrivals to Dover. However, it
Marion Millar’s nightmare is over. The Scottish accountant facing prosecution for ‘transphobic’ tweets has been told the Crown is discontinuing its case against her. Millar stood accused of acting in a threatening or abusive manner and in a way aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation and transgender identity. At issue were a series of
Devolution has done so much to fracture the UK that, in Scotland, Rishi Sunak’s Budget is an event of the second order. Scottish interest in Budget day is typically limited to whisky duty, support for North Sea industries and the Barnett formula: the additional spending Scotland gets when the Chancellor splurges on England. Today’s Budget was
After the assassination of Jo Cox by a white supremacist, there was an angry insistence from progressives and the mainstream (the two were not yet the same) that the threat of the far-right be confronted. Questioning the role played by mental illness or even terming the assassin a ‘loner’ was framed as an attempt to
There are two ways Number 10 can look at new polling which shows only 14 per cent of Britons understand the slogan ‘levelling up’. The first: the government has utterly failed to communicate its signature policy. The second: at least they didn’t poll the Cabinet. The findings, which come in research by Redfield & Wilton
Glasgow’s bin men mostly manage to avoid being drawn into international relations but that could be about to change. The city’s refuse workers have voted 96.9 per cent in favour of industrial action in response to a pay offer that would have seen local government employees on less than £25,000 gain an extra £850. Unless
Lord Frost’s Lisbon speech represents the most cogent argument yet for replacing the Northern Ireland protocol. So naturally it has been buried under a slurry of snark, solemn head-shaking and breathless indignation. It is worth stepping back from the noise. Switch off the shouty man on LBC, mute the ‘this is not normal’ people on
Gavin Barwell has made a good point, albeit inadvertently. Theresa May’s former chief of staff has a book out, imaginatively titled Chief of Staff, and in it he touches upon the question of Brexit and Scottish independence. Noting that Boris Johnson is unpopular north of the border, the now Baron Barwell of Croydon says: ‘The
Like all good fables, Douglas Ross’s speech at Tory conference had a beginning, middle and end. Act One detailed the many iniquities of the SNP, from their dysfunctional vaccine passport scheme to their Hate Crime Act, and most of all their agitation for Scotland to break away from the UK. Act Two took the sword
The SNP handles criticism as well as the Incredible Hulk handles irritation. It’s why the party’s own parliamentarians are banned from making critical comments. The Nationalists are an independence-first organisation and rely on two important psychological tools. The first is projecting Nicola Sturgeon as the ‘Chief Mammy’ (her own term; ‘mammy’ being Scottish slang for
In just a few weeks, Glasgow will be the focus of the world’s attention for the COP26 summit. For the Prime Minister, however, two major embarrassments await. Firstly, an environmental conference aimed at weaning the developed world off fossil fuels looks set to take place in the middle of a British energy crisis. Secondly, Glasgow
As unhinged Labour conference motions go, the party’s anti-Aukus resolution will likely capture the headlines. The text describes the new defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US as a ‘dangerous move that will undermine world peace’. Sir Keir Starmer is on record backing the alliance but the Labour leader can at least take
The chair of this year’s Labour Party conference, Margaret Beckett opened proceedings yesterday emphasising the importance of civility. A few hours later, Angela Rayner delivered some remarks to a Labour conference fringe event which included the following description of the Tories: Well, she’s running. Labour’s deputy leader has suffered false starts in her efforts to
