Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
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
Susan Aitken, the worst thing to hit Glasgow since the Luftwaffe, might well be Britain’s most hapless council leader. The SNP leader of Glasgow City Council was challenged again on the city’s cleaning crisis during a BBC interview last night. Shown footage of graffiti at the Scottish Event Campus, soon to host the COP26 conference,
Moshe Feiglin is the figurehead of far-right, free-the-weed libertarianism in Israel, a country where this barely makes the top ten weirdest ideological mash-ups. Back in 2013, when he was still a powerful player on the right-wing of the right-wing of the Likud, Feiglin gave an interview to the New American, the magazine of the John
The Spectator is a magazine for conservatives written by liberals. From that tension comes an editorial persuasion — there is no line — that can seem winsome, beguiling, even perverse. Optimistic but never idealist, sceptical of the big but not the new, The Spectator combines a radical’s grasp of the possible with a reactionary’s sense of
The awkwardly-named AUKUS agreement reflects Washington’s escalating concern about China’s dominance in the Indo-Pacific. It signals London’s determination to be more, not less, involved in the global community after Brexit and the retreat from Afghanistan. Ultimately, however, this deal is about Australia. Few countries are as pivotal to regional security yet so poorly understood as
The British Medical Association (BMA) has dropped its opposition to assisted dying after a landmark vote. In doing so, it marks a journey from professional principle onto the ethical fence. This is not the first time the BMA has declared itself neutral on the termination of post-natal human life. In 2005, the organisation voted to
I can’t claim to know any behind-the-scenes rivalries or boardroom brouhaha motivating Andrew Neil’s departure from GB News but I am glad to see him go. Neil is out at the still ill-defined channel which can’t decide whether it’s a populist classical-liberal network, standing up to authoritarian cancel culture, or a British version of Fox
