Scotland

Gordon Brown has broken his silence again. The former prime minister told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the Scottish Parliament had ‘failed to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland’ and had instead become a ‘battering ram for constitutional warfare’. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped down the well? And creating a Scottish parliament to run almost all of Scotland’s affairs separately from the rest of the UK helped rather than hurt the campaign for independence? Jeepers. The battering ram that Brown laments exists only because the party and government in which he played a somewhat senior role insisted on fashioning it. At the time of the Scottish devolution referendum

Twenty years ago, the Scottish parliament was reconvened after a lapse of almost three centuries. The logic for devolution was clear enough: that Scotland has discrete issues, and ones that were not always solved by London government. Devolution would allow ‘Scottish solutions for Scottish problems’. There was, in Westminster, a feeling that MPs could worry less about these problems. Public health in Glasgow, previously one of the biggest problems in the UK, would be someone else’s problem. Let the MSPs see if they could do any better. The news this week should shock people on both sides of the border. Scotland has the worst rate of deaths from drugs in

I spent the early part of last week in London, filming what are known in the television trade as PTCs (‘pieces to camera’). These will form the connecting tissue for a three-part documentary series loosely based on my most recent book, The Square and the Tower. Ten years ago, I did a lot of this kind of thing. A series of books, beginning with Empire, started life as television scripts, in an effort on my part to bring history to a wider audience. (The effort was quite successful but earned me the disdain of a certain kind of academic prig.) In those days, PTCs were delivered on location, and the

In August 2007, three months after coming to power at Holyrood, the SNP launched its National Conversation on Scotland’s constitutional future. We have been talking about little else since. Among the many national conversations postponed is one on immigration. The CBI has tried to kick-start such a discussion by warning that, within 20 years, just one third of Scotland’s population will be of working age. Given that figure is currently 64 per cent, it is an arresting claim. It is also entirely plausible. The Office for National Statistics predicts the number of working-age Scots to grow by just one per cent between now and 2041, while the pensioner population is expected

There’s an episode of Father Ted in which the simple but endearing Father Dougal gets stuck on a milk float booby-trapped with a bomb. The finest clerical minds in Craggy Island convene to devise a solution and as they discount each increasingly far-fetched fix, the well-meaning Father Beeching pipes up: ‘Is there anything to be said for another Mass?’. Nicola Sturgeon evidently studied at the Beeching Seminary for Crisis Management. Every time there’s an SNP conference looming, her advisors agonise over how to string along the Yes faithful a little longer, until the boss sighs: ‘Is there anything to be said for another Indyref 2 statement?’ The Scots Nats gather

It’s been a busy old week in Scottish politics. The SNP government is suffering a public backlash over plans to allow councils to levy a tax on workplace car parks. There has been a fatal infection outbreak at another hospital. MSPs are angry that the nationalists have installed one of their own as chair of the parliamentary inquiry into the government’s handling of the Alex Salmond affair. Best of all, the Scottish Government’s headquarters opened its first gender-neutral toilets.  Nicola Sturgeon, though, has missed it all. The First Minister is on a trade mission ‘promoting Scotland in North America’, according to the Scottish government. Scots have been settling Canada and

Nicola Sturgeon’s indication that SNP MPs will back a second vote on Brexit might be clever politics but it is likely to stir up further animosity among English voters towards the Scots. Consider the Future of England survey, which shows that 88 per cent of English Leave voters (and 52 per cent of all English voters) would accept the break-up of the UK so long as England leaves the EU. Some might suggest that the poll is further evidence of the Little Englander mentality that will ineluctably drive the Scots to secede from the Union. But does it instead reveal something else? Perhaps, it would seem, English voters are getting as tired

Scots are used to tumult and unpredictability in their politics but this morning they are waking up to something of a different order. Former first minister Alex Salmond has been reported to police following allegations of sexual assault by two female staff members, according to the Daily Record. One of the alleged incidents, the paper claims, took place in Bute House, the official residence of the first minister of Scotland and now home to Nicola Sturgeon. The complaints were reportedly uncovered by an internal Scottish Government investigation and handed to Police Scotland.  Salmond denies all allegations against him and, what’s more, is now taking his own former government to court. In

When Alex Salmond stepped down as First Minister, he famously unveiled a commemorative stone engraved with the message ‘The rocks will melt with the sun before I allow tuition fees to be imposed on Scottish students.’ If he wants to see melting, he should go to the UCAS website and look at the courses up for grabs in the clearing system – then change the settings to say you’re Scottish. The courses melt away. (For example, here is the English version of Glasgow University clearing courses: law, history, all sorts of gems. And here is the Scottish version). Why the difference? Because England’s students bring fees. As a direct result

Of course it was a “stunt” – the Westminster village’s preferred term for any piece of nonsense that disrupts the serenity of the mother of parliaments – and of course it was planned in advance. Pete Wishart, the SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire, tweeted that prime minister’s questions would be unusually interesting this week.  For a given definition of interesting, that is. The SNP’s walk-out was engineered to win the party some attention and a place at the top of this evening’s Scottish news. Job done. Mission accomplished. Well done lads. It was all very reminiscent of the 1980s when Alex Salmond, among others, was forever making an