Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
Here is a list of things that happened in Scotland this week. See if you can guess which caused the biggest political row: GDP statistics showed economic growth less than half the UK rate, the third consecutive year Scotland has lagged. One in 12 under-25s is now on a zero-hours contract. The chair of NHS
None of this is normal. It’s important that we cling to that. It’s not normal that British Jews are forced to protest for their fair treatment and safety. It’s not normal that four-fifths of the Labour Party think such protests are a political tactic or a Zionist plot. It’s not normal that the man who
A question for Labour’s moderates, however we define the term and assuming they are still sizeable enough to merit the plural: Do you want to see Jeremy Corbyn become Prime Minister? Specifically, do you think he possesses the character and temperament of a national leader? Does the prospect of a Corbyn-led Labour government fill you
‘The Scottish Conservatives aspire to lead the next government of Scotland,’ proclaims Ruth Davidson in a pamphlet setting out the party’s thinking. Could it really happen? Could the Tories go from wipeout in 1997 to triumph in 2021 – from resisting devolution to effectively running the show in a generation? Too long; didn’t read answer?
The Labour Party brings to mind any number of Yiddish expressions — most of them involving the performance of lavatorial functions — but none more so than the proverb Der mentsh trakht un Got lakht. Man plans and God laughs. The Almighty’s black humour is surely at work in the resignation of Christine Shawcroft, chair
We may be witnessing a #MeToo moment in Labour anti-Semitism. Britain’s Jews, so damn accommodating and willing to extend the benefit of the doubt, have finally snapped and said ‘enough is enough’. At 5.30pm tonight they will gather in Westminster to protest in the most British way imaginable by handing the Labour Party a strongly-worded
John Bolton – owner of the finest moustache in American politics since Teddy Roosevelt – has been appointed Donald Trump’s new national security adviser. He replaces the outgoing HR McMaster, a veritable survivor who managed to last 395 days at the White House. That’s two terms plus a recess appointment in MAGA years. Hysteria is
The SNP is a coalition that behaves like a megachurch and when the spirit is low, the congregation remembers its schisms. One such departure is defence, because, for all they appear a homogenous rabble of bomb-banners to unsympathetic outsiders, the Scottish Nationalists are quietly but keenly divided on security. The combination of their current political
Privately educated. Mother of Len McCluskey’s child. Close ally of Jeremy Corbyn. Jennie Formby’s appointment as Labour general secretary is a heartwarming tale of how one woman managed to overcome all her connections to make it to the top. More than that, it is confirmation that The Corbynite Takeover Of The Labour Party Is Now
There’s a book I’d like to send to Theresa May: ‘Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain’. The Prime Minister might not be minded to devour a left-wing journalist’s charge sheet against Tory Britain but she ought to. James Bloodworth, the author, took a series of zero-hours roles, from Amazon grunt to Uber driver, to see
Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, was a red-baiter of such ferocity he made Joe McCarthy look like Julius Rosenberg. There was almost no one in 1950s America Welch did not accuse of allegiance to the Soviet Union. His crusade reached its apogee as only it could with a 1958 tract naming President
Munroe Bergdorf has resigned as Labour’s LGBT adviser after just one week in the job. Her appointment looked quite promising until it emerged she had deployed ‘butch lezza’ as an insult, joked that she’d like to ‘gay bash’ a TV character, and described gay Tory men as ‘a special kind of dickhead’. ‘Ever find that sometimes you’re just NOT
If your week was less than fun, spare a thought for Justin Trudeau. The Canadian Prime Minister’s seven-day visit to India went down like an undercooked biriyani on the subcontinent. When he landed in New Delhi last Saturday, Trudeau was greeted on the tarmac, not by the Prime Minister or Foreign Minister but by the
There are two competing theories about how the Soviet Union collapsed. One holds that Ronald Reagan’s moral leadership against communism and bolstering of US defences weakened Moscow’s will and buried them economically. The other contends that Mikhail Gorbachev’s domestic reforms and wise diplomacy brought down the Iron Curtain in spite of the cowboy in the
The SNP, you’ll be distressed to learn, are having a time of it. The party is embroiled in a deputy leadership contest that could have been designed by their worst enemies. Angus Robertson, who lost his Moray seat last June, has resigned, depriving the party of one of its most formidable and respectable advocates. His
Say what you like about Nicola Sturgeon but she’s consistent. Every autumn, when she sets out her programme for government, the First Minister makes the same pledge: ‘We will make it a priority to improve the educational outcomes of pupils in the most disadvantaged areas of Scotland… a targeted approach to attainment that will help
There are three people in every conversation about Jeremy Corbyn’s grim past. I have noticed this before but renewed interest in his paid work for Iran’s Press TV confirmed it for me. First, there’s the anti-Corbynista, who points out one outrage or another. This might be Corbyn’s ‘friends’ in Hamas and Hezbollah, his inviting a hate preacher to tea
All progress is war on the past and millennials are particularly merciless combatants. The arrival of Friends on Netflix UK has had this neo-Victorian generation reaching for its fainting couch. Through woke eyes, the hit NBC sitcom isn’t a diverting entertainment but an artefact of racism, sexism and homophobia. If you were a twentysomething during
I don’t know where people get the idea the SNP is intolerant of criticism. Scotland’s most open-minded party has released a new video that appears to be an attack on one of its critics dressed up as a party political broadcast. The video depicts a group of thirtysomethings gathered for a house party. They are Scottish but
When is left-wing not left-wing enough? Veteran Labour organiser Ann Black is finding out the hard way. Yesterday morning, she was the respected chair of the disputes panel, the party’s internal disciplinary committee, and responsible for investigating anti-Semitism and other accusations against members. Now, she is the respected former chair, ousted in a Momentum-led coup
