Scotland

SNP minister admits misleading parliament over Limogate

Well, well, well. Just when the Scottish government thought it had steadied the SNP ship after two rather tumultuous years, another scandal has hit the party. Health Secretary Neil Gray is in the spotlight after it transpired that he had been using taxpayer-funded ministerial cars to take him to sports matches in the latest ‘Limogate’ development. Gray had initially claimed he attended matches in a work capacity and had minutes for every meeting – but this evening the SNP minister has now admitted to inadvertently misleading MSPs over the matter. Between 2022 and 2024, Gray attended nine football matches involving Aberdeen or Scotland using taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven cars. His attendance at the 2023

Steerpike

SNP minister faces scrutiny over football expenses

Back to Scotland, where SNP health secretary Neil Gray is in the spotlight over some rather curious expense claims. The nationalist minister has come under fire after it emerged that he had been using ministerial cars to take him to sports matches – and now further questions are being raised about just how justified these trips were. Between 2022 and 2024, Gray attended nine football matches involving Aberdeen or Scotland using taxpayer-funded, chauffeur-driven cars. The SNP health secretary declared his excursions in line with official guidance, logging two of the games as meetings with the Scottish Football Association on the ‘social impact’ of sports investment while the other two were

Lucy Dunn

What’s behind Reform’s surge in Scotland?

Five years ago, Reform UK had no presence in Scotland. Its Facebook and Twitter pages emerged during the latter half of the pandemic and despite briefly experiencing four months in Holyrood courtesy of a Tory defector, the group has since then remained very much out of sight and mind. Nigel Farage neglected Scotland during last year’s general election campaign, his deputy Richard Tice visited just once and the group still lacks a Scottish leader. Despite all that, however, Reform is shaping to become kingmaker in the 2026 Holyrood election. ‘Everywhere I went, people were talking about Reform. And I thought: there’s something really going on here.’ On Thursday, The Spectator revealed that

Andrew Liddle

The dilemma facing Scottish Labour MPs

For Scottish Labour’s significant crop of new MPs, the heady summer of electoral triumph is already a distant memory. In the days following the general election – where Anas Sarwar’s party swept the Central Belt, gaining a whopping 36 seats – it seemed Scottish Labour’s recovery was not only inevitable but already underway. In the months since that has all changed, with Scottish Labour’s popularity declining as much – if not more – than its UK counterpart. A Norstat poll in December, for instance, had Scottish Labour at its lowest ebb in three years and the SNP, remarkably, on course to once again form the Scottish Government following devolved elections

Friday

17 Jan 2025

Iain Macwhirter

Will the SNP come to its senses on North Sea oil?

Drill, baby drill. The mood on Net Zero is changing in the Scottish parliament where a majority of MSPs have signed a petition calling for a reversal on the ban on new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea. This sea change in attitudes to the black stuff, if you’ll excuse the pun, could portend a dramatic reversal of the Scottish government’s opposition to fossil fuels in SNP leader John Swinney’s long-delayed energy strategy. The “presumption against offshore drilling” has been the centrepiece of SNP energy policy since Cop26 in 2021, when Nicola Sturgeon posed for selfies with Greta Thunberg. Sturgeon is gone, of course – and her clean

Steerpike

Humza Yousaf takes aim at media in Grazia photoshoot interview

Hapless Humza Yousaf has a lot more time on his hands after he was forced to quit as Scotland’s First Minister last year. Now it transpires that the former FM has enjoyed a sit down – and photoshoot – with Grazia Pakistan’s Beauty Editor to recount his brief stint in the top job. After his fall from grace in April last year, Mr S isn’t surprised the former Scottish leader is itching for a return to the limelight. Dotted among multiple pictures of Yousaf modelling various stately poses is the ex-FM’s interview. The SNP MSP discusses everything from his political awakening, why he was drawn to the pro-indy movement and

Thursday

16 Jan 2025

Lucy Dunn

The PMQs question that should really worry Keir Starmer

The leader of the opposition found it difficult to land her punches in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, with Kemi Badenoch not quite able to work out how she wanted to attack Sir Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister fended off a number of issues from the Tories, from the economy to the Chagos Islands to Gerry Adams – but in the end it was a question from his own side that threw the Labour leader off balance. It wasn’t the usual soft questioning the Prime Minister might have expected from his own party when new Labour MP Brian Leishman stood up to speak. The left-leaning politician for Alloa and Grangemouth –

Steerpike

Scottish Tory council leader defects to Reform

Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay has barely been in the job four months and already his party is facing defections. Mr S can reveal today that Glasgow councillor – and the Scottish Conservative’s leader on Glasgow City Council – Thomas Kerr has jumped ship to Nigel Farage’s party to represent Reform UK on Glasgow City Council. With the Scottish Conservatives already nervous about next year’s Holyrood poll, the news will come as yet another blow ahead of the election… The Glasgow councillor – who in 2023 stood against Labour’s energy minister Michael Shanks in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election – has insisted that ‘Reform UK represents the change that

Wednesday

15 Jan 2025

Steerpike

Scottish Labour face an uphill battle, poll suggests

All is not well in the Labour party. While Sir Keir Starmer’s government fends off questions about the state of the economy and its worsening poll performance, things aren’t looking much better north of the border. New Scottish voting data has dropped this morning – and Anas Sarwar’s Scottish Labour lot have much to be worried about… Less than a quarter of Scots say they would use their constituency vote to back Labour in the 2026 Holyrood election, while barely a fifth of the population would vote for Sarwar’s party on the regional list. The survey reveals that the Scottish Labour leader is simply not yet popular enough to persuade

Jenny Lindsay

The ‘self-cancellation’ trend taking over the literary world

The phenomenon that has blighted the live literature world over the last ten years could be classed as a ‘stooshie’, or ‘a big commotion’, in Scots. Indeed it feels rare for any books-based event or literary festival not to provoke one these days. The last decade has seen a huge increase in fractious warring in the world of books, driven in no small part by the use and abuse of the powers of social media by certain activist-writers. In my experience as a writer and former events organiser of two decades in Scotland, there has been a rising intolerance amongst a significant minority of often mid-career or even debut authors

Tuesday

14 Jan 2025

Kyle Macleod

Scotland has never had it so good

Thanks to the threat of independence, Scots have – in the words of Harold Macmillan – ‘never had it so good’. Scotland’s current position within the United Kingdom, in which it can hand out many social benefits to its citizens without actually paying for them strongly encourages fiscal profligacy. And why not? Who would argue against greater NHS spending, free prescriptions, or free higher education when the cost will be shared with our English neighbours? The effective scrapping of the Universal Credit two-child limit in Scotland is the latest example that shows how the current situation benefits the country. Just last week, the Scottish Fiscal Commission published estimates of the cost for mitigating

Euan McColm

Scotland’s safe consumption room won’t solve the drugs crisis

Quarterly reports from the office of National Records of Scotland confirm time and again the existence of an ongoing drug deaths crisis north of the border. And, time and again, the Scottish government reveals itself to be devoid of ideas for how to tackle it. Now, however, there has been a flicker of progress with the opening of the UK’s first safe drug consumption room in Glasgow this week. But will it make any real difference to the national drugs death crisis? I have my doubts. Scotland has the highest rate of drug-related fatalities anywhere in Europe. And, despite repeated assurances from ministers that they recognise the problem, there is

Monday

13 Jan 2025

Katy Balls

Sturgeon-Murrell split & Scotland’s Reform challenger

13 min listen

Former Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced she is separating from her husband Peter Murrell, former chief executive of the SNP. The announcement comes as the police probe into the SNP’s funds and finances remains ongoing, with Sturgeon and ex-SNP treasurer Colin Beattie under investigation while Murrell was charged with embezzlement in April 2024. Katy Balls is joined by The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove, and data editor Michael Simmons, to discuss the separation, why the investigation is still ongoing four years later, and what chances Scottish Labour or Reform have against the SNP in 2025.

John Ferry

The SNP’s ferries disaster isn’t over yet

The Scottish ferry, the Glen Sannox, has completed its first passenger journey, 2,610 days after it was infamously launched with fake parts and painted on windows by then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Unlike the staged fanfare of that 2017 event, no children were bussed in to wave Saltire flags at Troon harbour this morning, nor speeches given by any government official. This was a quiet affair, in line with current First Minister John Swinney’s strategy of distancing himself from the failings of the Sturgeon era. In 2017, Nicola Sturgeon said the new boat would contribute to ‘Scotland’s world-leading climate change goals’. It seems it might instead negatively impact those climate ambitions Islanders will no

Steerpike

Nicola Sturgeon announces divorce

To Scotland, where there is trouble in nationalist paradise. Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon has this morning announced that she will be divorcing her husband – and former chief executive of the Scottish National party – Peter Murrell. The shock news was published as a short statement on Sturgeon’s Instagram story, with the SNP’s Dear Leader writing: With a heavy heart I am confirming that Peter and I have decided to end our marriage. To all intents and purposes we have been separated for some time now and feel it is time to bring others up to speed with where we are. It goes without saying that we still care

Niko Vorobyov

Scotland’s drugs consumption room could save lives

Being a drug addict has never been sunshine and roses, especially not on the cold, rainy streets of Glasgow. At least now there may be a glimmer of hope. From today, a ‘Safer Drug Consumption Facility’ called ‘The Thistle’ will open in the city that has been labelled Europe’s drugs death capital. Drug addicts ‘under the supervision of trained health and social care professionals’ will be able to shoot up with clean, sterilised syringes. At no point will Old Bill make an unwelcome appearance, dangling a pair of handcuffs. The caveats are that you must be over 18, sharing your drugs is not allowed, and the usual rules about indoor