Scotland

There are still perfectly reasonable, thoughtful Labour MPs who sincerely think their party has a good chance of winning a majority in May, even though most of their colleagues are reconciled to being the largest party. I’ve found more of them in Parliament in the past few weeks than I have found Tories who think the same about their party. But today’s Ashcroft poll may well mean that the verbs in that first sentence have to change into the past perfect. There were still perfectly reasonable, thoughtful Labour MPs who sincerely thought their party had a good chance of winning a majority in May. Then the Ashcroft poll came out,

The headline figures in today’s YouGov poll for The Times are brutal for Scottish Labour. Labour (27 percent) are still 20 points behind the SNP (48%). But that’s the good news. Because everything else is even worse. Consider this: 95 percent of SNP supporters think Nicola Sturgeon is doing a good job. That’s impressive or, if you prefer, slightly terrifying. But, hark at this: 39 percent of Labour supporters think Nicola is performing admirably. Her net approval rating amongst Labour voters is just -4. Jim Murphy’s net approval rating amongst SNP supporters, meanwhile, is -54. Or this: 67 percent of SNP voters say there is no chance they will change their minds before the election but

While the behaviour of the Westminster mob at PMQs is often reminiscent of playground bickering, the women of Scotland are taking a more civilised approach as they prepare for First Minister’s Questions. Far from any hostilities between their opposing parties, Nicola Sturgeon has been joshing on Twitter with Ruth Davidson, Leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, and Kezia Dugdale, Deputy Leader of Scottish Labour. The trio put their politics aside to support Andy Murray in his match at the Australian Open. @RuthDavidsonMSP I’m sure we could come to some arrangement – @kdugdalemsp? — Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) January 29, 2015 @RuthDavidsonMSP @NicolaSturgeon yes, there in a minute, looking for the Pimms — Kezia Dugdale (@kdugdalemsp) January

There’s a belter of a scoop in today’s Daily Mail. James Chapman, the paper’s political editor, reports that the Ministry of Defence is examining plans to move Trident from Scotland to Wales. I’m particularly confident that this story is correct because I had heard something very similar from Whitehall sources. There is understandable concern that a second independence referendum in Scotland is now likely and so the whole question of where to move Trident in the event of a Yes vote arises again. I also wonder if this work might not come in handy in the event of a hung parliament where the Scottish Nationalists hold the balance of power. The SNP have repeatedly

Even by the standards of the Conservative and Unionist (sic) party this is an impressively stupid poster. Do they really want to encourage Scots to vote for the SNP? Evidently they do. Of course we know why. Every seat Labour lose in Scotland makes it less and less likely Labour will emerge from the election as the largest party. Consequently, every SNP gain makes it a little more likely David Cameron will have a chance of cobbling together a second ministry. But, my god, think of the price at which that comes. In their desperation to stop Miliband the Tories are prepared to risk the future of the United Kingdom.

It didn’t take long. In fact, the tweet from Nicola Sturgeon appeared soon after Alistair Carmichael had started speaking this morning. Smith clauses publication welcome – but doesn’t include a general power to create new benefits in devolved areas as was promised 1/2… — Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) January 22, 2015 2/2…and gives UKG effective veto over changes to universal credit, including bedroom tax. @scotgov will work to secure improvements — Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) January 22, 2015 The Scottish Secretary was in Edinburgh with fellow Scot Danny Alexander to launch the UK government’s blueprint for more devolution for Scotland. Carmichael was just championing the arbitration process, which would sort out any

Patriotic peers have demanded that David Cameron raise the US haggis import ban with President Obama at the White House today. As Steerpike noted yesterday, the 1971 ban on the product is under renewed scrutiny in the run up to Burn’s Night, with Lord McColl demanding answers to great cheers in the House of Lords this morning. Apparently ‘this wholesome food is much better than the junk many Americans eat’. Tory peer Michael Forsyth even went as far as to demand that a special envoy on the matter be appointed immediately, and suggested the former First Minister Alex Salmond might be free to take the fight directly to the Yanks. Only

Tomorrow, parliament will debate a topic of immense significance. Steerpike hears that Tory peer Lord McColl is planning on championing a great repressed minority, in a land that claims to be free. Not so much a political hot potato, rather a hot sheep stomach stuffed with the animal’s heart, liver and lungs. Since 1971 haggis has been banned in the States, denying the 24 million Americans who claim to be of Scottish descent (with varying degrees of credibility), from celebrating Burns Night properly. Behind the scenes there has been a long lobbying campaign to have the ban overturned, aimed at Defra and the US Embassy, and spearheaded by Ranald Macdonald, owner of

We’ve just had two years of intensive constitutional politics. Time enough, you’d think, for even London-based politicians and commentators to work out how British politics actually works. But if you think that you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Consider our old friend the Barnett Formula. Antiquated and not entirely fit for purpose – it being a 1970s convenience that was itself an updated version of the 1880s Goschen Formula – but hardly a mystery or a terribly complicated piece of financial wizardry. And yet it seems that almost no-one in the Westminster village actually understands how Barnett works. Yesterday, you see, Jim Murphy promised that he would use Scotland’s share of

The proverbial visitor from Mars would assume that the Scottish Nationalists had won—not lost—September’s referendum. Alex Salmond has given another crowing interview today, you can read mine with him from The Spectator’s Christmas issue here, in which he offers advice to England on how to rediscover itself. While the crisis in Scottish Labour continues. In an interview with The Guardian, Labour’s new Scottish leader Jim Murphy drives home how big a challenge the party faces there, ‘We’re 20% behind. Just to get even we have to close the gap by 1% a week.’ Murphy is also remarkably frank about the quality of the leaders that preceded him. When Libby Brooks

Today’s Guardian long-read on the Scottish referendum is a great piece of journalism. Both Alistair Darling and Danny Alexander argue in it that when David Cameron stepped out of Downing Street and announced his support for English votes for English laws he allowed the SNP to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, to argue that Scottish voters had been hoodwinked.   Now, to be sure, Alex Salmond make much of Cameron’s announcement. In his Spectator interview he says that it showed that Cameron thinks Scots ‘heads zipped up the back’ and that he didn’t get the enormity of what had just happened. But the idea that Cameron’s announcement alone,

The Most Rev Philip Tartaglia, Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, is at it again: There is a feeling around that we are in a special moment when we can shape a new Scotland. Our new First Minister, who is happily with us here this afternoon, has proposed a more consensual form of government, less partisan, less party-political, and less adversarial. I think everyone would welcome that … We are all equal in Scotland … all free to express our views and follow our consciences. The Archbishop was speaking earlier this month at an ecumenical service attended by Nicola Sturgeon. By all accounts she was pink with pleasure at his lavish tribute. But

Is it acceptable for writers to sport their political allegiances publicly? In more sensible times you’d hardly need to consider the question since its answer would ordinarily be so bleedin’ obvious. These, of course, are neither sensible nor ordinary times. So it is with the fauxtroversy over whether or not it is acceptable – or, worse, appropriate – for Liz Lochhead to have joined the SNP.  This is a real thing, it seems and yet another example of how politics corrupts most things it touches. Lochhead, you see, is not just a poet she is Scotland’s Makar (or poet laureate) and therefore, god help us, it’s all very different. For some reason. People are