Past experience demonstrates that Rangers supporters won’t find anything funny about this: As I say, Rangers fans are immune, even at this late stage, to even gallows’ humour. Everyone else? Well, not so much. After all: If this – and sending Rangers into the stygian depths of Scottish football – constitutes success in the corporate restructuring world one scarcely dares contemplate the horrors of failure. [Thanks to JPT]
Nearly a decade ago, a book called He’s Just Not That Into You became what is termed a ‘publishing sensation. I don’t know if this attempt to explain men to women was persuasive or not (the odds seem against it being so) but its title seemed pertinent to yesterday’s launch of the Unionist campaign to preserve the United Kingdom in a more-or-less recognisable form. Why? Because of the man who wasn’t there. David Cameron didn’t attend the Better Together event held at Napier University. This was not a surprise but his absence was still telling. Perhaps the Prime Minister has been persuaded his presence in Scotland is more liable to
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
The notorious splitters in the Free Presbyterian Church are at it again. The Wee Wee Frees (who should not be confused with the more numerous Wee Frees) warn that Scottish independence is a risky ploy since the Act of Union copper-bottomed the protestant faith and any change to that, however well-intentioned, risks wrath and much else besides. It could be ‘a provocation to God’, no less. It might be, you know. Though the SNP has devoted much time and effort to wooing the Catholic hierarchy, the fact remains that modern Scottish nationalism is an almost exclusively secular business. Indeed one could go further and suggest that though the nationalist revival
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
The most stirring sermon I ever heard was delivered by a company sergeant-major in the Black Watch to a cadre of young lance-corporals, barely 19 years old, who were about to experience their first deployment to Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Like an old-fashioned Presbyterian minister, he warned them of the dangers of the world, in this case roof-top snipers and stone-throwing rioters, and the temptation these presented to the unwary soul, in this case, as he put it, ‘to run like buggery’. But they would not succumb, he said; indeed, they would lead their sections looking such dangers fearlessly in the face, because they were armed with a greater
Political stocks can go down as well as up. Shares in Alex Salmond are hardly slumping right now but they’re off their peak and flat-lining. The market is becalmed. Perhaps the launch of the independence referendum campaign will reinvigorate the First Minister but it also carries the risk – unavoidable for sure, but still a risk – that concentrating attention on independence will remind voters that the SNP is, at heart, a single-issue party. And single-issue parties tend to run into trouble. There is a theory that the SNP have over-extended themselves. Even though they still hold more council seats than Labour (and so could claim their local election “failure”
It’s odd, but most of the English faces we see in our wee corner of the Scottish Borders are merely ‘stopping’ for a night or two on their way north. What is the point, they wonder, in driving all this way only to settle a hair’s breadth past that gaudy ‘Welcome to Scotland’ sign? If they must visit Scotland, they think, they might as well do the thing properly. The Borders aren’t really Scotland, after all — just that last tedious leg of the A68 on the way into Edinburgh. They are, of course, gravely mistaken. You will find as strong a sense of Scotland here as in the grimmest
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”,
The campaign for an independent Scotland launches today — but the date to really keep in mind is the 27th June, when The Spectator will hold its own debate on Scotland’s future. The motion is ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’. The venue is the Royal Geographic Society in London. The chair is Andrew Neil. And we’ve collected a great bunch of speakers to argue for and against, including Gerry Hassan and Kelvin Mackenzie on the ‘For’ side, and Malcolm Rifkind, Rory Stewart and Iain Martin on the ‘Against’. For further details — and tickets — click here. We’d be delighted to see you there.
This week the SNP will launch their campaign for Scottish independence. Or, rather, it’s the official beginning of what they term the ‘Yes’ campaign. Prefacing this, Joan McAlpine uses her column in the Daily Record to list ten reasons why Scots should endorse independence. It is an interesting list, not least because McAlpine, who is close to Alex Salmond, is one of the higher-profile SNP MSPs and someone to whom it is always worth paying attention. This is her list: 1. An independent Scotland would be the sixth wealthiest country on earth. According to the OECD, apparently. It’s the Black Gold, silly. This is a very dubious statistic. It relies
The death of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for their part in the Lockerbie Bombing, is a matter of some relief. It marks the end of one part of an affair from which few of the protagonists graduate with credit. As this is Lockerbie, however, you can expect the conspiracy fires to burn for some time yet. As far as Megrahi’s release is concerned I continue to believe cock-up rather more probable than conspiracy. Alex Salmond was stretching his case to breaking point yesterday when he pointed out that Megrahi had at least died of the prostate cancer with which he had been diagnosed. See, he really was
There are times when the SNP’s attempts to persuade us that there are no regrettable consequences to Scottish independence cross the line between worthy and absurd. The future of shipbuilding on the Clyde is one such case. According to the nationalists the suggestion that the Royal Navy (or what is left of it) might be less likely to place orders with Scottish yards is just the usual “scaremongering” put about by Unionist parties that want to put the frighteners on braw and brave Caledonia. Aye right. It is, of course, true that an independent Scotland might have modest shipbuilding needs. True too that the Clyde yards, if they remained open, could
Years ago, before government began to take its toll I remember reading an interview with young David Cameron published by the Dundee Courier. The paper wanted to know if the leader of the opposition (as he then was) had any plans to reverse the army reforms that bundled all the Scottish infanty regiments together to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. As I recall, Mr Cameron (gently) suggested he was unlikely to be able to unpick that reform but stressed he was mindful of the importance of local afiliations and that he understood the depth and breadth of sentiment attached to the regiments in Scotland. Aye, weel, tht was then
As the dust settles on these elections, it is becoming clearer how the parties did. Labour exceeded expectations, the Tories had a bad but not disastrous set of results and the Liberal Democrats took another kicking. Indeed, they actually lost a higher proportion of the seats that they were defending this year than they did last year: 44 per cent compared to 41 per cent in 2011. Given these results is it is quite remarkable how solidly behind Nick Clegg the Lib Dem parliamentary party remains. Not a single MP has called for him to go or for the party to quit coalition. I’m sure this is partly because the
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
Forget London. Odds are that Boris will win re-election while Labour becomes the largest party on the GLA. There are far more exciting battles going on around the country. Here’s the state of play in 15 cities outside the M25: 1. Birmingham. After strong gains in 2011, Labour are looking to depose the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition and regain the overall majority they held here until 2003. They need just five gains to do so — and, with 18 Tory seats and 13 Lib Dem ones up, that shouldn’t prove too difficult. Both of the coalition parties are simply in damage limitation mode. 2. Glasgow. Labour held a majority here for
The next round of army cuts will be announced next month as the government reduces reconfigures Britain’s military capability yet again. According to a report at the weekend the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the Royal Scots Dragood Guards will be two of the casualties heading to the knacker’s yard. Progress, if that is what it is, waits for no man and sentiment plays no part in these deliberations either. Perhaps that is as it should be. And yet it is possible for sentiment to be discounted too cheaply too. An army is, in part, the weight of its history. Recent governments, of either colour, have paid no heed to
With unionists getting grubbed in Scotland and Labour being driven to near-extinction in vast swathes of the south, a new map of political Britain is emerging. In my latest Telegraph column, I called it ‘Tricolour Britain’ — the SNP at the top, Tories at the bottom and Labour stuck in the middle (with Wales). Policy Exchange has today released research which throws more light on this slow-mo political segregation. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in what strike me as the top points. 1. Scottish Tory Syndrome is when a once-dominant party loses and doesn’t recover. The party has failed to capture the imagination of voters, so when its apparatus
It’s Friday afternoon and even Rangers fans might have to laugh at this: There have been numerous [football computer] games throughout the history of the genre which have fallen by the wayside: Sierra’s Ultimate Soccer Manager, Elite’s Complete Onside Soccer and… Ally McCoist’s Director of Football. Released in 2001, the game allows you to manage some of the less glamorous sides of the game, including the expansion of your stadium, negotiating contracts and finding sponsorship. If you ever wanted to be part of the decision making process on the number of car parking spaces by your stadium, you genuinely can in this simulation. However, given the current state of Rangers,