Nicola sturgeon

We are past peak SNP. The party has won a third successive Scottish Parliamentary election, an achievement that is not to be sniffed at, but it has lost its overall majority. There are signs that the normal rules of political gravity are beginning to apply in Scotland again. Equally telling is that the SNP is out of big ideas. Its manifesto was a thoroughly managerialist document. It also now seems highly unlikely that there will be another independence referendum before 2021, and the next Scottish Parliament elections. The SNP now faces a challenge of how to use the extensive powers that are coming the Scottish Parliament’s way. If it doesn’t

Strange as it may seem, there are still people around David Cameron who regard the Scottish referendum campaign as a great success. Yes, they say, the nationalists didn’t like the original ‘Project Fear’ — the attempt to frighten Scotland into voting no — but it worked. Alex Salmond was defeated by a 10 per cent margin — proof, it’s argued, that relentless negativity works. Those who complain about it are either losers, or too squeamish to win. Andrew Cooper, chief of the Scottish ‘in’ campaign, said afterwards that the only criticism he would accept is that it was not negative enough. This attitude is a poison in the bloodstream of

Although Nicola Sturgeon puts her career in politics down to Margaret Thatcher, she scarcely has anything positive to say about the Iron Lady. In fact, the SNP leader says that she entered politics as a result of her anger at the impact of Thatcher’s politics on Scotland. Still, she appears to have no qualms about borrowing one of the methods Thatcher used to help ensure success at the polls. The SNP’s latest election advert bears the slogan ‘don’t just hope for a better Scotland, vote for one’. As Scottish Labour have since pointed out, this bears a strong resemblance to Thatcher’s 1979 election slogan, which read: ‘Don’t just hope for a better life. Vote for

Do you want to know what it looks like when one party has become the most dominant force in its country’s political history, when one in every 30-odd voters is a member of that party and when it is regularly topping 50 per cent in the polls? Then look no further than central Edinburgh this morning where Nicola Sturgeon was launching the SNP’s Holyrood election manifesto. The queues to get in to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre stretched back for several streets as supporters and party members waited eagerly in the warm spring sunshine for the chance to hear, and see, their leader in person. The inside of the hall

Politics, as we know, makes the strangest of bedfellows. Step forward Tam Dalyell, Laird of The Binns and erstwhile Father of the House, and the editor of this estimable organ. In the space of this last week I have heard/read both sources refer to Scotland having a one-party state in the shape of the Scottish National Party; the former at Glasgow’s Aye Write! Book Festival and the latter in an editorial on Donald Trump. I would have expected better from both! At the last count there were certainly a handful of countries to whom that description could properly be applied. North Korea and the People’s Republic of China spring to

This week Yvette Cooper was taken to task by Nick Ferrari on LBC over her refugee pledge. Although the former Labour MP had declared that she would be happy to house refugees in her own property, it turns out that she hasn’t actually done so: NF: Have you taken yours yet Yvette? YC: No that’s what I said, because the government has said… In the interest of fairness, Mr S thought it best to check in with another politician who had pledged to take in refugees. Step forward Nicola Sturgeon. Back in September, the SNP leader said she would be ‘more than happy’ to take in refugees into her own home. ‘Yes, I would

It wasn’t quite David Cameron and his down-to-the-wire talks with the EU leaders, but it’s as close as we get in Scotland. For the last eight months, the Scottish and UK governments have been trying to secure agreement over the financial settlement which will underpin the new tranche of powers to come to Holyrood – the so-called ‘fiscal framework’. After weeks of torpor and inaction suddenly, this afternoon, we got a breakthrough. Nicola Sturgeon announced the deal to the Scottish Parliament this afternoon, confirming that everything had come down to one crucial, central point. The Scottish Government favoured one model to work out Scotland’s funding from the Treasury for the future and the

All Westminster might be agog with the latest shenanigans vis-a-vis the got-to-happen-at-some-point EU referendum but most sentient folk in this blessed land are magnificently uninterested in the matter. Not even this morning’s Telegraph splash – ‘Attorney General may back Brexit’  – can stir them from their slumber. At best the majors will have asked, over their E&B this morning, ‘Who is the Attorney General these days?’ North of the border, matters are just as quiet even though another great question remains unsettled. As yet, you see, there is no agreement on the terms of a ‘fiscal framework’ which will underpin the relationship between the finances of the devolved parliament in Edinburgh and the

Given last year’s election was so much about the possibility of the SNP and Labour working together in government, Labour figures will be smiling ruefully at Nicola Sturgeon’s interview on the Andrew Marr Show today, in which she stuck the boot into the party she once suggested a ‘progressive alliance’ with. The Scottish First Minister is of course thinking more about fighting Labour in this year’s Holyrood elections than about the Westminster Parliament, and so she wanted to paint her main challengers as weak and confusing. She told the programme that the party would end up ‘without a shred of credibility’ if it held a free vote on Trident renewal,

Minority sects are often more interesting, and more colourful, than their more popular rivals. That must explain why the Scottish Tories continue to be the subject of so much fascination. Barely a month passes without someone, somewhere, asking if this — at long last — is the moment for a Scottish Tory revival. Spoiler alert: it never is. Logic says that at this year’s Scottish parliament elections, things should be different. It is generally agreed that Ruth Davidson, the party leader in Scotland, had a ‘good independence referendum’; generally agreed, too, that after Nicola Sturgeon, she might be the most impressive politician in Scotland. This might be reckoned a low

Christmas is almost here, so it’s time for our annual year in review podcast. In this View from 22 hour-long special, I’m delighted to be joined by a stellar line-up of Spectator contributors to look back on the events of the past twelve months, as well as asking each of our guests for their person of 2015. Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth discuss the surprise Tory victory in May’s general election and how David Cameron has finally proven himself a winner. Does he now have the whole Conservative party behind him? And who should take credit for this victory? Fraser Nelson and Alex Massie look at the rise and rise of the SNP and how Nicola Sturgeon managed to

So, it turns out that the SNP weren’t that bothered about the plight of foxes after all. Back in July, you might remember, David Cameron was forced to backtrack on his plan for a parliamentary vote on relaxing the hunting ban, after the SNP decided to vote against any changes. This, of course, came after Nicola Sturgeon wrote in February: ‘the SNP have a long-standing position of not voting on matters that purely affect England — such as fox hunting south of the border, for example — and we stand by that.’ But now we hear that just a month after blocking Cameron’s proposed changes, the SNP received a £10,000

Someone at Scottish Labour is having a very bad day. The beleaguered party’s Perth conference has made the news. Alas, it has made the news for the wrong reason after a video posted on the party’s official YouTube channel had an embarrassing typo. The video in question was supposed to help the party win the youth vote, with a message on the screen supposed to read ‘generation for the next’. However, whichever Labour brain typed it up, ought to take some time out to brush up on their spelling as the message actually read ‘genertaion’: Still, at least they have won the attention of the SNP: I hope @scottishlabour have a good conference

At the SNP conference the First Minister and her deputy, John Swinney, both had precisely the same thing to say about university. Here’s Swinney: “Students from a poorer background have never had a better chance of a place at university than under the SNP”. And Nicola Sturgeon: “More students from poorer backgrounds are now going to university”. More. That’s the test they set: if more poor students are going to uni then the SNP is succeeding. They both talk about “university,” as distinct from other forms of further education. Yes, the ratio of poor kids at uni is rising in Scotland – but shamefully, it’s half the level of England. Worse, the gap is growing (see chart,

Nicola Sturgeon spoke at the open and close of the SNP conference, and her speech today transposed the key themes of the short address she gave on Thursday morning. She attacked Jeremy Corbyn for disappointing her ‘high hopes’, saying ‘so far, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t changing Labour – he’s allowing Labour to change him’. And she talked about independence, though in this speech the First Minister didn’t talk about when, but how. Her first speech had acknowledged that the party couldn’t commit to another referendum until there was evidence a majority of Scots were now in favour of leaving. Today she argued that ‘if we want Scotland to be independent –