Scotland

Conservative Home’s survey of 144 of the Tory candidates most likely to enter parliament after the next election is very interesting. It’s hardly a surprise that the Tories want British history to be taught in schools, nor that they’re in favour of school vouchers and strongly euroscpetic. Nor is it an enormous shock that 48% of them say they would have voted for Barack Obama in the US presidential election (that says more about the state and temper of the contemporary Republican party than it does about either Mr Obama or the Tories). But it’s a sign of how the times have changed that 62% of the Class of 2010

Thanks to David Maddox for this gem. During a debate on BBC Scotland last night, marking a decade of devolution, Iain Gray, leader of the Labour party at Holyrood, boasted of the parliament’s achievements: Has it [the Scottish Parliament] made a difference?” he asked rhetorically. “Yes it has. When the Parliament started one in five children in this country lived in poverty. That’s now one in three. That’s significant progress.” God knows, mind you, how much more of this progress we can take. Oh, Iain Gray was once a teacher. His subject? Mathematics, obviously…

This is a day for anniversaries: my 35th and the Scottish Parliament’s 10th. The latter is, I concede, the more significant milestone. Once upon a time George Robertson, then Shadow Scottish Secretary, declared that devolution would kill the demand for independence “stone dead”. His Labour colleague, Tam Dalyell, disagreed predicting that devolution would put us on the “motorway” towards independence. Well, a decade later, neither man has been vindicated and, indeed, the case remains Not Proven. Scotland does not stand where once she did, but nor has her future path been determined. It is still too soon to say whether devolution has been a success, but some myths concerning it

Here’s a disturbing report from one of the great institutions of the land: They cannot be assimilated and absorbed into the British race. They remain a people by themselves, segregated by reason of their race, their customs, their traditions and above all by their loyalty to their religion, and are gradually and inevitable dividing Britain, racially, socially and ecclesiastically… Already there is a bitter feeling among the British working classes against the muslim intruders. As the latter increases, and the British people realise the seriousness of the menace to their racial supremacy in their native land, this bitterness will develop into a race antagonism which will have disastrous consequences for

Although I’ve long felt that the Unionist parties would have been well-advised to call Alex Salmond’s bluff and have an independence referendum as soon as possible (like, er, this year), the notion that Gordon Brown might decide to hold a referendum on Scottish independence the same day as a general election strikes me as a typically Broonian too-clever-by-half wheeze that, upon closer inspection, turns out to be utterly daft. In other words, James Macintyre’s story in the New Statesman is sufficiently silly that one cannot immediately discount it. Here’s what Macintyre writes: Meanwhile, a separate idea, bold if controversial, is quietly being considered for the same election day: a referendum

Robert Bruce (1274 – 1329), King of Scots from 1306, breaks the handle of his battleaxe as he kills the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun with a blow to the head before the Battle of Bannockburn, June 1314. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Mercy, how can one forget that this is the 695th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn? Scottish nationalists, naturally, like to claim the day for themselves and there’s an annual (and I suspect, dreary and chippy) nationalist rally at the battlefield but it’s not theirs to claim as their exclusive property. Far from it. Because, in the end, Bannockburn was a great Unionist victory too. For without

Away from the BNP and the Woes of Brown (which sounds like an Aberfeldy tea-room or something) the other notable european result came in Scotland where the SNP’s handsome victory (29-21 over Labour) confirmed that Labour can no longer automatically consider itself the natural governing party in Scotland. Given that the 2007 Holyrood election was essentially a tie (the SNP winning on away goals), this was the first time the SNP had ever routed Labour in a national election. Sure, Labour’s difficulties at Westminster played a large part in this, but only a part. Their inability to counter Alex Salmond’s merry band at Holyrood was also a factor. This, even

When a politician tries to make a virtue out of the fact that he was brought up in a household in which lying was frowned upon then, verily, you know he’s on his uppers. Equally, though I daresay that much of the expenses scandal does offend the remnants of Gordon’s “presbyterian conscience” it’s not immediately clear that asserting his own membership of the Elect is necessarily going to endear the Prime Minister to his twin congregations at Westminster and in the country at large, each of which is manifestly fallen… Anyway, if Brown’s “presbyterian conscience” really is all he’d like us to think it is and if his bally “moral

A reader asks, not without reason, what I think of the Scottish Tories attempts at a makeover since their wipeout in 1997 and whether, given that I’m generally, broadly speaking, in favour of the reformers when it comes to Project Cameron or Project GOP, I’m also happy with the Scottish Tories softer than softly-softly approach to decontaminating their “brand”. So, not too much to chew on there. The first thing to be wary of is our old friend the Pundit’s Fallacy. That is, the erroneous belief that a given political party’s electoral prospects would be transformed if only they were sensible enough to tailor their policies to fit my own

David Cameron’s speech to the Scottish Tory conferene was, I thought, workmanlike rather than inspired.The troops enjoyed it even if they were not necessarily enraptured by it. Interestingly he spent more time attacking the SNP than Labour, portraying the Conservatives as the only party that can truly efend the Union. Of course Labour will argue that a vote for the Tories will encourage the SNP given the nationalists’ palpable desire for a Tory government in Westminster. It is not impossible that both parties are right. Still, Cameron’s speech also betraed the fact that, ten years on from devoution, the Tories remain, perhaps unavoidably, in a defensive crouch in Scotland. “I

In a risky break from blogging orthodoxy, I’m actually attending a political event today (and tomorrow!) and have travelled north to Perth for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party’s annual conference. Next year’s election – assuming we have to wait until then – will be a strange one in Scotland since, for the first time, the electorate will have two parties against which to cast protest votes. That is, voters may choose to vote against either Labour or the SNP. Or both. Add the complexities of a four-party system in a first-past-the-post election and the picture rapidly becomes somewhat murky. That the Caledonian campaign is something of a sideshow that