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As political journeys go, it’s akin to Jeremy Corbyn quitting his allotment to grow marrows on an Israeli settlement. Nicola Sturgeon, a lifelong pro-European since June 24, 2016, has decreed that the SNP will vote against the free trade pact agreed by the UK and the EU. This is quite the turnaround. Sturgeon has previously said ‘a no-deal Brexit is a catastrophic idea’, warned of ‘the dire economic consequences of a no-deal Brexit’, described ‘the nightmare scenario of a no-deal Brexit’ and urged the UK Government ‘not to countenance in any way a no-deal Brexit’. She personally claimed that no-deal ‘could push 130,000 people in Scotland into poverty’ and touted

Ursula von der Leyen quoted TS Eliot’s poem ‘Little Gidding’ in her press conference today: ‘What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end, is to make a beginning.’ The free trade deal between the UK and the EU marks beginnings (new arrangements on commerce, fishing and security cooperation) and ends (the single market, free movement, Erasmus), but what we can’t yet be sure of is which category Scottish independence falls into. We might glean the answer from the 2,000-page agreement when the text is published but it is more likely that the question will remain open for some time. In the orthodox reading –

SNP tempers were running high this afternoon, as the Commons debated amendments to the Internal Market Bill, which deals with the UK’s goods and services after Brexit. The Scottish nationalists have described the Bill as a ‘full-frontal assault on devolution’ because it hands some EU powers back to London. That might explain the poor behaviour of one SNP MP this afternoon. Ahead of the amendments being voted on, the Nationalist politician Drew Hendry decided to make an impromptu intervention. Despite having finished a five-minute speech on the Bill moments before, Hendry clearly decided that his voice hadn’t yet been heard enough and used the opportunity to launch yet another diatribe at the

Whenever the Scottish nationalists start talking about ‘fairness’, you know someone’s getting shafted. SNP education minister John Swinney has cancelled Scotland’s higher exams for 2021. Not out of concern over safely administering the assessments in a socially-distanced manner, but because letting them go ahead at all could be ‘unfair’. Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy told the Edinburgh parliament on Tuesday: ‘Exams cannot account for differential loss of learning and could lead to unfair results for our poorest pupils. This could lead to pupils’ futures being blighted through no fault of their own. That is simply not fair.’ You might remember Swinney from his previous stance on exam fairness. That was back in

Before Covid-19, if you can remember such a time, this was supposed to be a difficult year for Nicola Sturgeon. Her party had been in power in Edinburgh since 2007 and, like all ministries of such antiquity, was beginning to look jaded. There was never any doubt that she would remain First Minister following next year’s Holyrood elections, but the prospect of her winning a majority seemed to be receding. Opposition parties believed that a relentless focus on the SNP’s record in office would be enough to clip Sturgeon’s wings. After 13 years, it was hard to point to many stunning successes: on the contrary, failures and scandals were accumulating.

The Spectator recently ran a piece by Andrew Wilson, author of the SNP’s Sustainable Growth Commission, under the headline ‘Scotland can’t afford to remain part of the Union’. For those seeking any fresh insight into either the moral or economic case for breaking up the United Kingdom, it was thin gruel.  Instead of coherent arguments, we were offered bold and unsubstantiated assertions. We are asked to believe that the separatists’ position is ‘highly sophisticated’ and that because of Brexit, ‘staying in the Union is riskier than independence’. Any worries about the economic implications of leaving the UK single market, abandoning the Sterling currency union, losing the economic support offered by

In case you missed the memo, it’s now illegal to cross the border to Scotland unless you have a ‘reasonable excuse’ that meets the First Minister’s requirements. Nicola Sturgeon’s new law – which limits the number of people who can travel from England to Scotland – is said to be aimed at protecting public health north of the border.  Luckily Sturgeon has her close allies on standby to support her in policing this new restriction. Step forward Ian Blackford. The SNP’s leader in Westminster is so devoted to the cause that he has even taken to social media to look out for those who may have fallen foul. After a man posted

Tory MPs are already starting to talk about May’s various elections. Boris Johnson’s first post-Covid electoral test will take place on 6 May and will show the durability — or otherwise — of his 2019 electoral coalition now that Brexit is ‘done’ and Jeremy Corbyn is gone. Can the Tories hold on to the much-prized Teesside and West Midlands mayoralties? If the answer is yes, the party will feel it can face the future with confidence. If not, it will start to panic. But the most significant result of the night will be the most predictable one: a Scottish National party victory in Holyrood. The SNP is currently polling comfortably,

Every so often I make the mistake of thinking Boris Johnson must have exhausted his capacity for indolent carelessness and each time I do he pops up to remind me not to count him out. There are always fresh depths to which he may sink. For he is a Prime Minister who knows little and cares less that he knows so little. In happy times of placid prosperity this might be inconvenient but tolerable; these are not such times. Speaking to his northern English MPs last night, Johnson declared that devolution has been ‘a disaster north of the border’ and was the biggest mistake Tony Blair ever made. The implication,

Robert Conquest’s third law (which may not have been his third law) says that the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is most easily explained if one assumes it has been captured by enemy secret agents. This maxim often comes to mind when I read about the UK government’s latest wheeze to ‘save the Union’. Ministers’ new ideas are invariably the same idea they’ve been having for a decade now: devolution has failed, let’s have more of it. The Tories have already transferred more powers to Holyrood twice, in 2012 and 2016, and both times we were assured that doing so would subdue the separatists. And that was the last we heard

The first cabinet meeting of the new term and Boris Johnson’s summer holiday were both dominated by one concern: how to turn the tide on Scottish nationalism. Johnson’s foray into the Highlands was intended to demonstrate his own personal commitment to the Union; it also allowed him to find out for himself how awful mobile phone coverage is in much of rural Scotland. The cabinet on Tuesday discussed how to stop the Scottish National party turning the legislation that will underpin the UK’s post-Brexit internal market into their latest argument for independence. The Prime Minister is confident about his chances of knocking back the Nationalists. The decision of the Scottish

How does a believer lose the faith? It might begin with some quibble about a point of doctrine: the Virgin Birth, for instance. The believer struggles intellectually but cannot accept the dogma. What starts as a quibble then turns into an obstacle; as the doubt grows, the whole belief system starts to unravel. One day it dawns on them that they no longer believe. Reader, I am myself undergoing such a struggle to maintain my political faith in Unionism. I have been an instinctive, largely unquestioning Unionist ever since I became politically aware. The roots of my faith are simple enough: Scotland and England can do more together than individually.

The SNP’s determination to push on with its draconian Hate Crime Bill has put it on the wrong side of Scottish public opinion. A new poll indicates popular unease with plans to criminalise speech on everything from religion to ‘transgender identity’ if it is deemed ‘likely that hatred would be stirred up’. The Savanta ComRes poll of 1,008 Scottish adults found both generalised endorsement of classical liberal precepts such as free expression, open debate and the absence of a right not to be offended, as well as more specific concerns about the Bill itself. The headline findings are: 87 per cent of respondents agreed that free speech was an ‘important

Every time I re-read the SNP’s Hate Crime Bill, I become more convinced that its author, Humza Yousaf, is trying his hand at a Titania McGrath style satire of wokeness. Scotland’s justice secretary is woke but his draft legislation is such a smash-’n’-grab of every item on the wishlist of coercive progressivism that he can’t be entirely serious. It’s not everyone who can forge common cause between the Catholic Church and the National Secular Society, the Law Society and the Scottish Police Federation, so Yousaf is gifted in that regard. Now the Faculty of Advocates, Scotland’s answer to the Inns of Court, has issued a 35-page examination of the Bill,