Scotland

Friday

Alec Marsh

Scotland is sailing’s best kept secret

Among the glorious shores of these islands, there is one of the best-kept secrets of sailing. It’s a ragged and rocky coastline that is blessed with the sort of idyllic, empty sandy beaches stretching on for miles that would make Tom Hanks’s castaway shake from method acting-induced PTSD. Here the blue waters are scattered with islands rising from the depths with the kind of muscular topography that would have your average geography teacher reaching for their colouring-in pencils. This, my friends, is the west coast of Scotland. Forget the Caribbean, wonderful though the punch, the people and the terribly reliable temperature all are. The untouched beaches of the Western Isles are

Thursday

Maggie Fergusson

A narrow escape in Britain’s most treacherous mountain range

Twenty-five years ago, my cousin Jock, a Scottish priest, rang in shock. Two priest friends, David and Norman, had been walking in the Cuillin in Skye. As Norman rounded a boulder, it dislodged and rolled him off the mountain. He screamed: ‘David, save me!’ They were his last words. The Cuillin — or Black Ridge — slice the island of Skye in two. On a map they are a Spaghetti Junction of deranged scribbles. Closer to, they rise up like the fangs of Mordor in dizzying spires with names such as ‘The Executioner’. ‘The Inaccessible Pinnacle’ is something like Orkney’s Old Man of Hoy, only rising not out of the

Saturday

John Ferry

When will Nicola Sturgeon see sense on Scotland’s mounting deficit?

UK borrowing in 2020-21 hit a record level of almost £300 billion, representing 14.2 per cent of British GDP, reported the Office for National Statistics in June. In the face of the biggest spending challenge since the Second World War, the Treasury, backed by one of the world’s most established central banks, stepped up to supply all the funding needed to pay for furlough, business support and a highly successful vaccination programme. Now imagine a prime minister in receipt of those borrowing numbers announcing that the future path for the UK is clear: we must disband the Treasury and Debt Management Office; shut down our central bank; start again from scratch

Thursday

Stephen Daisley

The blind spot in the SNP’s ‘war on drink’

Scotland’s grim reputation for abnormally high drug fatalities has become embedded in the public consciousness over the past year. The fact that fake benzodiazepines (‘street valium’) can be procured for 50p a pill on the streets of Dundee and Glasgow is now common knowledge, as is Scotland’s unenviable place at the top of Europe’s drug deaths league table. However, belated attention to this crisis should not allow signs of another to slip below the radar. New figures from National Records of Scotland (NRS) show a 17 per cent surge in alcohol-specific deaths between 2019 and 2020, a rise from 1,020 to 1,190 in the space of 12 months, what NRS

Monday

Stephen Daisley

A papal visit would be another blow to Scottish anti-Catholicism

You wait 2,000 years for a papal visit and three come along almost at once. Reports in the Scottish press suggest that Pope Francis would like to say Holy Mass while in Glasgow for the COP26 climate summit in November. It would mark the third time a sitting pope has visited Scotland and celebrated Mass there. Saint John Paul II was the first to come, in 1982, and led an estimated 300,000 in worship at Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park, then in 2010 his apostolic successor Benedict XVI gave an open-air Mass in the same park to a crowd of 70,000. Both events were seen as successes, attracting interest from non-Catholics and

Friday

Henry Hill

Devolution doesn’t work in a crisis

One of the worst features of devolution is the tendency of devocrats to insist on doing their own thing in all circumstances and at whatever cost. The idea that decentralisation would lead to experimentation and the sharing of best practice now seems hopelessly naive. Instead, politicians in Edinburgh and Cardiff try to use nationalism to earth criticism, treating an attack on their records as an insult to the Scottish or Welsh people. Perhaps the most abject example was when a Welsh minister accused Michael Gove of harbouring ‘colonial attitudes’ when the then-education secretary penned an article comparing English and Welsh school outcomes. Even the evidence base that might have supported

Thursday

Andy Miller

David Keenan, literary disruptor in chief

Near to the heart of this wild and labyrinthine novel — on page 516 of 808 — a character in a letter addressed to his future self within the reminiscence of a disfigured and imprisoned second world war sailor who will subsequently be transformed via sorcery, surgery and sex into a medium and prophet, eventually finding his way to Scotland where he will marry his own wife again, though possibly not in that order, states the following: My studies in magic and experimental psychology and of course alchemy suggested that the goal of magical practice, which had become the goal of art practice, was a reuniting of fractured selves across

Friday

Henry Hill

No, Boris didn’t ‘snub’ Sturgeon

One of the reasons the SNP has dominated Scottish politics for so long is that it is extremely adept at turning any crisis into a political crisis. So it is with the recent figures revealing that the Scottish government has overseen a truly appalling rise in drugs deaths over the ten years it has been in office. Scotland now has the highest per capita rates in Europe, several times higher than those of England or Wales. Yet if you ask Nicola Sturgeon, this is all somehow Westminster’s fault. The area is reserved and the Misuse of Drugs Act prevents Scotland introducing safe consumption rooms — so-called ‘shooting galleries’ — which

Thursday

James Forsyth

Boris shouldn’t rise to the SNP’s bait

The debate over Scottish independence has gone rather quiet since the Holyrood elections in May. Boris Johnson is visiting Scotland this week without the issue dominating. But, as I say in the magazine this week, the issue is likely to return to the fore this autumn. Sturgeon is on the verge of doing a deal with the Greens which would give her government an absolute majority in the Scottish parliament. Armed with this, and given her activist base is increasingly impatient, she may move to introduce an independence bill this autumn. This would be a deliberate provocation. The constitution is a reserved matter – and it is very hard to see

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Don’t pick a fight with the SNP

Since the Holyrood elections in May, the campaign for Scottish independence has been noticeably quiet. But that is about to change. This autumn Nicola Sturgeon will try to push the issue to the top of the agenda once again. The expectation in Edinburgh is that Sturgeon will soon unveil a governing agreement with the Greens, which would give her pro-independence government a formal majority in the Scottish parliament. With that under her belt, and with her activists increasingly impatient for action, she may move to introduce an independence bill. This would be a deliberate provocation. The constitution is a matter for Westminster — and it is very hard to see

Friday

Alex Cole-Hamilton

Has the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ time finally come?

I announced my candidacy for the leadership of the Scottish Liberal Democrats this week and am under no illusions of the task ahead of me should I take the helm. In the aftermath of the coalition there was a real risk that the Liberal flame could flicker out. But with hard work, my colleagues and I have succeeded in turning our constituencies into fortresses. We have Willie Rennie to thank for that in large part. In his decade in charge of our party, Willie has gained a personal affection among the public with his colourful photo opportunities and the most recognisable smile in Scottish politics. When I think of Willie’s

Saturday

Stephen Daisley

Boris could make devolution reform his legacy – if he has the ambition

Today marks two years since Boris Johnson accepted Her Majesty’s invitation to serve as her fourteenth Prime Minister. His tenure was meant to be all about Brexit but so far has mostly been about Covid, yet the invisible theme running under it all is the constitution. Britain is almost a quarter-century on from the legislative devolution experiments in Scotland, Wales and London, which leeched power away from Parliament and created rival seats of political authority to Westminster. Scotland is where devolution has taken its most aggressive form and where it has done the most to undermine the Union, parliamentary sovereignty and even the continued existence of the United Kingdom itself.

Thursday

Philip Marsden

The life cycle of the limpet teaches universal truths

Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature and ecology, from the friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge to the poetics of Homer, from the archaeo-ethnography of his own Hebridean island to the hardy and threatened lives of seabirds. To each he brings a vigorous curiosity and intellect, coupled with an emotional receptivity that ruffles the surface of his prose. Now he has turned his attention to the foreshore of Scotland’s west coast, and a particular point on the northern edge of the Sound of Mull — near Rubha an t-Sasunnaich —with its weeds and its wracks and its

Claudia Massie

Joan Eardley deserves to be ranked alongside Bacon and de Kooning

Painting is a fight and few artists demonstrate this more emphatically than the volatile and complicated post-war master, Joan Eardley. Scotland’s great English artist or England’s great Scottish artist, box her as you will, she’s revered north of the border, but often oddly dismissed south of it. The Scottish public have been enthralled by her work for decades, and spoiled in their access to it, with 60 or so pieces in the National Galleries of Scotland collection alone (the Tate has just one). You’re rarely far from an Eardley here, and never more so than in this, her centenary year, which sees some 20 shows and events lined up to

Tuesday

Stephen Daisley

Who can make the Scottish Lib Dems great again?

Willie Rennie’s resignation — announced, as only he could, via a self-shot video while climbing Benarty Hill in western Fife — means there’s now a vacancy at the top of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Given the party holds just four seats at Holyrood and four at Westminster, the summit of Benarty enjoys a more elevated position than the Lib Dem leadership. But can Rennie’s replacement have any more luck in reviving the party’s fortunes? The party was in government at Holyrood from 1999 to 2007 as Scottish Labour’s junior partner but Nick Clegg’s coalition with David Cameron, the rise of the SNP and the political realignment brought about by the

Sunday

Stephen Daisley

‘Anyone But England’ is a sad reflection of Scottish society

My name is Stephen and I am a Bad Scot. At least that’s how I feel. For the past week Italian flags have been popping up all over Scotland ahead of tonight’s Euro 2020 final. Music station Pure Radio Scotland rebranded itself ‘Pure Radio Italy’ for the weekend. A shopper in Glasgow complained that Tesco was failing to ‘help boost national pride’ after their local branch played the England fan anthem ‘Vindaloo’. A pub in the city centre had the moment Gareth Southgate missed the decisive penalty against Germany in Euro 1996 blown up into a giant poster and is displaying it next to the bar’s entrance. The National newspaper

Wednesday

Stephen Daisley

Cummings reveals the Unionist heart of darkness

Like Walter Kurtz, Dominic Cummings had immense plans but was tripped on the threshold of greatness by the weaknesses of his superiors. Now he holds court from his fortress temple of Substack where, in the fashion of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard, subscribers receive his glum musings on Covid strategy, systems management and judicial review. Cummings is sometimes regarded as a brilliant sociopath and while I sway back and forth on whether the emphasis belongs on the adjective or the noun, his insights into how government really works are immensely valuable to understanding policy-making, implementation and the impotence of power. I have come to the view that, if you want to

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

The Nicola Sturgeon effect on house prices

Nicola Sturgeon depresses me and seems to be having the same effect on Scottish house prices. In a housing market described by departing Bank of England economist Andy Haldane as ‘on fire’, the flames have been rising higher the further away from London — but more or less extinguishing themselves at Hadrian’s Wall. Why buyers are scarcer in Nicola’s domain is a question I’ll leave to our political writers, but the broader picture of soaring home prices across the rest of the UK is an unforeseen pandemic effect that may have painful consequences. Nationwide’s June data shows an annual price-rise bar chart increasing steadily from 7.3 per cent in London

Sara Wheeler

The strangest landscapes are close to home

This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so much as a book of fantasy: four small pilgrimages into imagination’. In its pages Nick Hunt unfurls his sleeping bag under a pink moon, breakfasts on a raw white onion and meditates both on what remains and on what we have lost. Outlandish is divided into four parts, each covering a short walk through a uniquely unusual landscape: Arctic tundra in the Cairngorms; a remnant of primeval forest straddling Poland and Belarus (‘the closest thing that Europe has to a true jungle’); the continent’s ‘only true desert’, in Spain’s south-eastern

Sunday

John Ferry

Nicola Sturgeon isn’t serious about IndyRef2

The announcement reeked of desperation. Nicola Sturgeon is ‘delighted’ that the SNP National Executive Committee has approved her nomination of retired MSP and party grandee Mike Russell as ‘political director of the HQ independence unit’. The statement, put out on Twitter last week, aimed to give a sense of momentum and industrious activity: Russell at the head of an elite squad of Nationalist campaigners who will deliver on promises of another referendum.  The appointment of Russell is not so much a sign of progress for the Nationalists as confirmation that their project to break up the UK has stalled. It follows the resignation, after just a few months in post,