Scotland

Cameron in the Fair City

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

Alex Massie

Easy Populism

In her speech yesterday Annabel Goldie decried the cheap and easy populism that she, rightly, described as the SNP’s approach to government. Fair enough. A shame, therefore, that she resorted to just that kind of easy, headline grabbing, rhetoric herself. Her announcement that the Tories a) respect the right of judges to decide matters for themselves and b) propose madatory two year prison terms for anyone guilty of simply carrying a knife was both contradictory and disappointing. Also sadly predictable. But it’s a measure of the hole the Scottish Tories still find themselves in that this easy populism was the “major” part of her speech. Just as revealing was her

The Caledonian Campaign Next Year

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

The Royal Navy vs the SNP

Alex Salmond may argue that Scotland is “two thirds” of the way towards independence (though even if Salmond is correct that doesn’t mean independence is necessarily imminent) but the Royal Navy doesn’t seem to agree. In fact, the MoD must consider independence unlikely, otherwise why* would it be basing all of Britain’s submarines at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde? According to the latest plans, the Trafalgar class of subs will move from Devonport to Faslane by 2017 and the new Astute class submarines will also be based in Scotland. The SNP’s defence policy, of course, is a mess. The party is vehemently opposed to nuclear weapons and considers

Holy Gordon’s Prayer

There’s a telling line in this story from the Mail which (if true!) gets to the heart of Gordon Brown’s sense of himself. Apparently he was unhappy with the line of questioning being pursued by a recent TV interviewer, leading Brown to complain, off-camera, that “You are impugning my integrity.” Now if ever a complaint reeked of the Manse, this is it. Not that the Prime Minister is alone in parading his own estimation of his integrity as though it deflected not only criticism but, more implausibly still, the very grounds upon which such criticism might be offered; the late John Smith could take such a view himself. Smith was

Are the SNP even more deluded than Labour? Why, yes, they are!

Scottish public spending has essentially doubled (albeit in absolute terms) since Labour came to power. (To what end, you ask? To very little end, I reply.) Now the British government has run out of money and it is obvious that there are going to have to be spending cuts if the public finances are ever going to be restored to some semblance of stability. This is obvious, I should say, to everyone but the SNP for whom any suggestion that it might be possible to cut even a tiny sliver of cash from the Scottish Government’s £35bn kitty is the vilest sort of anti-Scottish treachery. Then again, the Nationalists aren’t

Exams good enough for the rich are good enough for the poor too

Here’s an interesting – and, for once, encouraging – development. Motherwell College (soon to be moving to a new campus on the site of the old Ravenscraig steel mill) is going to offer students the chance to study for the International Baccalaureate, rather than Scottish Highers. That’s a small, but significant victory for school choice, as teenagers at high schools in Lanarkshire will now have the chance to apply for one of the places on an IB course that has, until now, only been available in the private sector in Scotland. (Indeed, fewer than 150 schools across Britain offer the IB at present, though that number will grow as A-Levels

RBS: All fur coat and no knickers

Such is the disrepute into which Scotland’s once all-conquering bankers have fallen that the favoured put down at Edinburgh dinner parties these days is “My husband pays your husband’s salary”. A period of silence on the part of these erstwhile Masters of the Universe would be most welcome. This injunction, it seems, also applies to their spouses. That sound you hear is the noise of a righteous middle-class populism. These are disconcerting, humiliating times to be a Scottish banker. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than at the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters at Gogarburn on the western outskirts of Edinburgh. RBS’s downfall and subsequent nationalisation-in-all-but-formal-name has made it open

World’s Worst Bankers Elimination Match

So, Scotland host Iceland tonight in the latest “crucial” World Cup qualifier. The loser will have almost no chance of making it to South Africa so tonight’s tussle is effectively an elimination contest. Just as importantly, the losers will assume the official, undisputed title of Worlds’ Worst Bankers. The Scotsman’s David Maddox runs through the line-ups here. Given the importance of the occasion it was reasuring to see the Scotland skipper prepare for the match in traditional style  – by getting bladdered in what the Daily Record called a “marathon booze session” after the team returned to their Loch Lomond HQ following Saturday’s 3-0 drubbing by the Dutch. Anyway, consider

A Lib Dem future? Not so fast my friends!

Tom Harris doesn’t much care for the Liberal Democrats: Having seen the damage done to the Labour Party through its association with the Liberals in the Scottish Parliament in previous years, there is, if anything, more hostility among MPs to the idea of power sharing than ever. On the other hand, if the Liberal Party want to sign up to the implementation of Labour’s manifesto in the aftermath of the election, fine. So long as they don’t expect either Labour or Tory MPs to agree to a change in the electoral system so that every possible outcome in future would result in the Liberals being in government. Now I’m as

SNP to World: Help!

How would the SNP have delat with the banking crisis? The FT’s Jim Pickard points out that “This is a valid question. The rescue of the Scottish banks has cost British taxpayers an estimated £2,000 per household. If Scotland was independent, the figure could have been closer to £13,000. How would it have coped?“ Mike Russell, the minister for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture, replied: “It would have been slightly different, it would have probably been done in co-operation with other countries…we would have done it in partnership with everyone involved.” Now perhaps the ECB might have helped and perhaps the Nationalists could have rustled up some cash from

The Problem of Being Like Scotland

One of the problems with nationalism is that it craves attention. The Scottish variety is no exception. Thus, for instance, the normally sensisible SNP Tactical Voting asks: One day we may read in foreign newspapers “why can’t we be more like Scotland?” once in a while. Wouldn’t that be a refreshing change? Jeff goes on to say how jolly splendid it is that the SNP’s proposals for price controls on alcohol might be emulated elsewhere in the UK and, who knows, in truly foreign countries too. Whoopee! But this is scarcely surprising. After all the Scottish parliament has led the way before. Brave Wee Scotland was the first to ban

Salmond’s Confederacy?

Alex Salmond has been in Washington, where he snagged an audience with Hillary Clinton and delivered a speech at Georgetown University. Hamish Macdonnell explains: In a speech on Monday he took the time to praise Abraham Lincoln. This is what he said: “A man whose spirit and example will light America’s path for centuries to come. And a man whose name evokes, in the minds of your friends worldwide, the very highest image of America.” It did not take long, however, for Labour spin doctors to point out that Lincoln was, of course, the one man who did more to keep the Union in America together, even going to war

No Scottish Referendum?

It’s not been a great couple of weeks for Alex Salmond, has it? First there was the budget hullabaloo, then the SNP was compelled to abandon (at least for the time being) its plans to replace the council tax with a local income tax and now the leaders of the opposition parties have each confirmed that they will vote against the nationalists’ referendum bill. As matters stand, then, there will be no independence referendum next year. The Tories, Lib Dems and Labour all say it would be “inappropriate” to have an independence debate in the midst of an economic downturn. Well perhaps it would and perhaps it would be a

Big Brother is Listening to You

The sad thing is that you can no longer consider this sort of thing surprising: Security cameras have long been a fact of Scottish life, viewed with relief by many communities and with suspicion by civil libertarians. But what if they were listening to you as well? It has already happened in Glasgow. A Dutch company called Sound Intelligence carried out a two week long trial in a busy city centre street. They stress that their system, called Sigard, does not record conversations. It listens not to what is being said but how it is being said. At the company’s headquarters in the Dutch city of Amersfoort, Bram Kuipers explained

David Cameron’s Peculiar Unionism

David Cameron’s op-ed in Scotland on Sunday this week was interesting. Not because of anything that Cameron said but because it appeared at all. It’s another small indication that the country is preparing itself for a new Conservative government. To put it another way, I don’t think SoS would have been very interested in an op-ed from Iain Duncan-Smith or Mixhael Howard. What would have been the point? What could they have said to the country that anyone wanted to hear? Not much. So Cameron’s proposals for how he would work with Holyrood are, while scarcely earth-shattering, useful to have put on the public record. Nonetheless, they are sensible, modest

Freedom and houghmagandie

The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford Robert Burns: A Biography, by Patrick Scott Hogg How to account for the phenomenon of Robert Burns? Not the man or his poetry, but the national icon, a Caledonian amalgam of Alexander Pushkin and Bob Marley? The process of idolisation began with the instant acclaim that greeted the publication of Burns’ first collection, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, in 1786. That it continues today in this the 250th anniversary of his birth is demonstrated by the publication of two new biographies. But to explain why is harder than it might seem. Logically Scotland and Burns should have been incompatible. A

Meanwhile, in Scotland…

Sometimes Scottish politics is far too exciting for its own good… An SNP pledge to give children free access to swimming pools is not being delivered, according to Labour. Scottish Labour sport spokesman Frank McAveety said only two councils provided school children with free, year-round access to pools… Mr McAveety said: “The SNP have been in power for 18 months now and we have seen absolutely no progress on their pledge to ensure that youngsters have free access to council swimming pools.” No wonder the Scottish parliament’s dealings are, quite reasonably, characterised as “Hamster Wars”.

Karl Rove and the SNP

I doubt many Nationalists would welcome the comparison but facts are stubborn things and the fact is that the SNP and Mr Rove have quite a bit in common. Just as Rove orchestrated campaigns in 2002 and 2004 that portrayed the Democratic party as being, in some odd sense, fundamentally unpatriotic (principally for the crime of not being Republicans) so the SNP’s default presumption is that any opposition to any of their policies is somehow an attack on Scotland itself. They are the only patriots in town. No-one else really has the country’s best interests at heart. How can they, after all, when they’re in thrall to a “foreign” power

The Scottish Tory Dilemma

Someone needs to tell Tom Harris MP that the “Unionist” in the “Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party” referred to the Union with Ireland, not that between Scotland and England. Equally, the fact that the Conservatives (in London) and the SNP (in Edinburgh) sometimes seem to be reciting similar talking points should scarcely come as any great surprise: the Labour party is their common enemy. True, the Conservatives oppose the Nationalists north of the border but as far as the UK party is concerned that’s a secondary front and one, more particularly, on which there’s little need for a fresh offensive this year. If, as Alan Cochrane hints, the Scottish Tories