Alex salmond

The Union is safe — at least if last night’s Spectator debate was anything to go by. The motion ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’ was defeated by 254 votes to 43. The SNP weren’t present (they demanded two representatives on the panel, and we refused), but independent nationalist Margo MacDonald opened the debate. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a summary of proceedings.   1) Margo MacDonald (for the motion) focused on foreign misadventures: Scottish soldiers should not fight American wars with British guns that were a greater threat to their own side than to the enemy. Money saved would go to essential social security. She explained that

The Battle for Britain is heating up this week, with the pro-union campaign launched in Edinburgh this morning and a Spectator debate on the union on Wednesday. We have, as ever, a strong lineup – but the Scottish National Party is noticeable by its absence. I thought CoffeeHousers may like to know why not.  We planned the debate ages ago, and from the offset wanted SNP to be on board. As Scottish separation would have implications for the whole of the UK we asked someone to make the case for English separation: Kelvin MacKenzie. And someone to speak up for the union: Sir Malcolm Rifkind. The Nats didn’t like this

Ed Miliband’s speech last week, in which he grappled with questions of Britishness, identity and Unionism, was a worthy effort. By which you will grasp that it was also, in the end, not quite good enough. The Labour leader spoke as though he had only recently appreciated — or had brought to his attention — that national identity on these islands is often a matter of choice and that — insert obligatory Whitman reference here, please — many people have multiple, layered identities that may, at times, even seem to contradict one another. Gosh, you think?   And, alas, he foundered in the Q&A when he told one inquisitor: ‘People

Ed Miliband laid out his vision for Scotland today, which didn’t quite set the heather alight. But word reaches me about what David Cameron is planning. He has already said that if Scotland votes ‘No’ they’d get a special something as a thank-you. But he did not specify what that something was. A bluff, says Alex Salmond, the same lies that Jim Callaghan sold Scotland in the 1970s and the special something was 18 years of Tory government! But Cameron is working on an offer. Soon, the &”Scottish government” (as Salmond calls his half-government) will control 30 per cent of all money raised in Scotland. Cameron is thinking that, after

Some of those who queued outside the Cineworld multiplex in Edinburgh for this morning’s Yes for Independence launch found it hard to contain their chortles. There, hanging above the door through which Alex Salmond was due to arrive was a huge poster carrying just two words — The Dictator. And if that ad for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie wasn’t enough to send the First Minister into a fury with his PR team, there was more inside. One poster for the film Prometheus carried the tag line: “The Search For Our Beginning Could Lead to Our End,” while a series for the new Ice Age movie proclaimed: “Cranky and Clueless”,

This was the election which was supposed to establish the SNP as Scotland’s new national party, replacing Labour as the default party of choice for Scottish voters. This was also the election which was expected show that last year’s extraordinary Scottish Parliament result was not a one-off and that the SNP could push on and defeat Labour in its town hall heartlands too. But none of this has happened. Not all the results are in from Scotland’s councils yet but the overall picture is already clear. Labour has recovered from last year’s Scottish Parliament shocker and halted the SNP momentum — at least in its core key urban areas of

The Economist has some fun with Scotland this week, running a cover suggesting my motherland would go bust if it was independent. The map has lots of gags: the Outer Hebrides is renamed ‘Outer Cash’, ‘Edinborrow’ twinned with Athens etc. But it suffers from one central defect: the thesis is nonsense. Saying that Scotland would go bust without English subsidy is the clichéd unionist attack line, which has lost force over the decades because it is demonstrably untrue. The emergence of new nation states, many much smaller than Scotland, has shown it that small is viable (something that wasn’t as evident in the 1970s) and even the Economists’ own story

Action over Scotland is certainly producing a reaction in England. It’s not what you’d call an ‘equal and opposite reaction’ yet, but it’s there — and it’s crystallised by Tim Montgomerie’s article for the Guardian this morning. I’d recommend that you read it in full, but Tim’s basic point is that David Cameron could score a ‘triple crown of political victories’ by moving towards a more federal UK: ‘By offering to extend Scottish devolution he can be the Conservative leader who saves the union. By promising to balance Scottish devolution with a commitment to new arrangements for the government of England, he can radically improve his own party’s electoral prospects.

The consensus opinion across most of today’s papers appears to be that Dave done good in Scotland yesterday. And now the Prime Minister’s cause has been helped that little bit more by the Lords Constitution Committee. ‘We are firmly of the view that any referendum that is held must be a straight choice between full independence or the status-quo,’ says the committee’s chairman Baroness Jay. ‘A third “devolution-max” option is clearly something every part of the UK must have a say in as it has the potential to create different and competing tax regimes within the UK.’ The strange thing is, a UK-wide referendum on ‘devo max’ could actually produce

Not many politicians would conjure up the spectre of Alec Douglas-Home to scare the Prime Minister, but that is exactly what Alex Salmond did today — to some effect. The Scottish First Minister was responding to David Cameron’s ‘jam tomorrow’ offer to the Scottish people. ‘Vote “no” in the independence referendum,’ Mr Cameron effectively told Scots today in his latest attempt to make some progress in the independence debate, ‘And I’ll see that you get major new powers for the Scottish Parliament.’ It was one part bribery, one part political strategy and Mr Salmond was on to it quicker than the average Scot can order a haggis supper. ‘We’ve been

The debate over the referendum on Scottish independence will take centre stage next week. Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, will see Alex Salmond in Edinburgh on Monday and then Cameron will head north a few days later. It appears that the coalition is ready to give way to Salmond on the date of the referendum but not on the fact that it must be a straight yes or no vote. Moore tells The Times (£) that ‘There absolutely must only be one question.’ Quite what the coalition will do if Salmond goes ahead with his own refrendum on devo max remains to be seen. I suspect that Salmond’s ideal result

A very useful contribution from Lord Ashcroft this morning, in the form of a poll he’s commissioned on Scottish independence. What sets Ashcroft’s poll apart from previous surveys is that he asks three different questions to three different sets of around 1,000 Scots.   The first is the question Alex Salmond wants on the ballot paper at the referendum: ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ 41 per cent say ‘Yes’ and 59 per cent say ‘No’. The second alters the wording only slightly, to ‘Do you agree or disagree…’ and finds 39 per cent agreeing (i.e. supporting independence) and 61 per cent disagreeing. So far, fairly

If Scotland can claim independence — and a ‘geographical share’ of the oil regardless of population — then why can’t Orkney & Shetland? It’s the Up Helly Aa festival in Lerwick tonight, where men dress up as vikings and set a longship ablaze. Not a very Scottish festival, but when your nearest city is Bergen how Scottish do you feel? Laurance Reed, a former Hebridean resident (and ex-MP), has a piece in this week’s magazine pointing out that, by the Salmond doctrine, there is nothing to stop the Scottish islands breaking off, claiming the oil wealth and becoming the Dubai of the north. His piece is below. Freedom for Shetland!,

‘A clear majority of people in Scotland now back independence, according to an exclusive poll for the Sunday Express. Using Alex Salmond’s preferred referendum question, the Vision Critical survey found 51 per cent would vote ‘yes’ with 39 per cent against. If such a dramatic result were repeated in the autumn of 2014, the First Minister would have an absolute mandate to negotiate an end to the Union with England.’ So runs the story. CoffeeHousers may have spotted two of the snags: the poll uses Salmond’s laughably loaded question, and seems to have been conducted by a chain of opticians. Further inspection gives a sample size of around 2,000 people,

So now we have it: the ten words which Alex Salmond hopes will end Scotland’s 300-year-old membership of the United Kingdom. ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ The First Minister unveiled his consultation paper on an independence referendum today and, to the surprise of many, actually did what David Cameron has been asking of him. He came out with a short, simple, clear question on independence which he wants to put on the ballot paper. The debate will now rage as to whether this question is fair (is it, for example, too positive? Should it perhaps include something about the United Kingdom?), but this does mark

Cartoonists like to portray Alex Salmond as a modern-day Braveheart preparing to charge the English enemy. But, in truth, Salmond’s strategy is far more subtle — and dangerous — than that.   The SNP leader’s piece in The Guardian today — a preview of the Hugo Young lecture he’s delivering tonight — downplays what a dramatic step independence would be. At times the article reads like an argument for ‘devo max’, not independence. He bemoans that devolution ‘left Scotland with fewer powers than the German Länder, most American states, parts of Spain or, within these islands, the Isle of Man’.   Salmond also wants to suggest that not that much