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The SNP’s Fiona Hyslop is not an obvious candidate to lead a cultural revolution. The Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs is more Nicola Murray than Nicola Sturgeon. Hyslop has a permanent look of terror that someone might ask her a question but she’s harmless enough. Stick a few flags and a bowl of borscht in her office and tell her she’s at the UN and she’d be happy enough. Yes, she’s a bit clueless, pretty forgettable and has achieved almost nothing in eight years but it could be worse; she could be Mike Russell.  That’s why I’m not terribly worried about the latest tussle between

A report suggesting that the £414m Scottish Parliament building could reach the end of its ‘useful life’ by 2060 – after just 45 years – provides the perfect metaphor for the state of devolution in 2017: a parliament that has been noticeably reluctant to use its powers in the last decade slapped with a ‘use by’ date. Irony can be awfully cutesy at times. The Scottish Parliament’s problems don’t begin and end with its building though. A poll by Panelbase gave voters an opportunity to declare themselves scunnered with the whole enterprise of devolution. Asked if, instead of independence or the status quo, they would rather shutter Holyrood tomorrow, 19 per cent of Scots said they are up

Could an Englishman ever be First Minister of Scotland? That’s the question the Scottish Labour party are having to grapple with this week after Richard Leonard announced his candidacy to succeed Kezia Dugdale as leader. A former trade union organiser and chair of Scottish Labour’s executive, Leonard sounds like the perfect Corbyn candidate – until you get to the fact that he is also English. Leonard’s opponents have been quick to jump on his nationality – briefing out that his English heritage is no small fry. They claim his Yorkshire accent could make it ‘hard’ for him to ‘connect’ with the people the party must win over to increase their vote share. One opponent

Nicola Sturgeon is invariably at her most persuasive best when she puts partisanship to one side and emphasises that, in addition to leading the Scottish National Party, she is also first minister of Scotland. Occasions such as yesterday, when she outlined her programme for government, give her that opportunity to shine. In place of boastfulness, there was modesty; in place of gurning about what she could not do, there was a refreshing emphasis on what she could. It was a speech tacitly admitting the truth of admissions made by former SNP ministers that during the referendum years the party allowed itself to be distracted by independence at the expense of ambitious

Ever since the snap election, Jeremy Corbyn has been in campaign mode – claiming Theresa May’s minority government is on the verge of collapse and that there will be another election within months. Tomorrow, the Labour leader kicks off a summer tour of Scotland, which he claims ‘holds the keys’ to getting his party back in power: ‘We have stayed on an election footing all summer, and nowhere is more important to delivering another Labour government than Scotland. The only way to deliver the truly radical change that Scotland needs is to back Labour in Scotland.’ Much to the upset of the Nats, the 18 seats Corbyn will be targeting

It is August and, except in Washington and Pyongyang, the square root of heehaw is happening. This poses certain difficulties for the residents of Grub Street. Desperate times call for desperate measures and if that means burning your hot take then so be it.  Hence the recent proliferation of articles claiming that Scottish nationalism is on the brink of extinction, undone by internecine feuding and subject to the implacable laws of diminishing returns. Well, there is just enough truth in this for it to be a vaguely tenable proposition: the SNP did endure a terrible election result in June (even though they remain the most popular party in Scotland) and

When Nicola Sturgeon’s indyref2 gamble backfired and the SNP got slapped around in the election, it was only a matter of time before the Nats turned on each other. But few expected things to blow up quite so quickly. Anger and anguish, division and recriminations – Scotland’s separatists have spent the past few months afflicting their movement with the rancour they visited on the country for five years. Scottish nationalism is going through a nervous breakdown. Its bloggers are in open warfare. Nicola Sturgeon is under fire from one of her former MPs for throwing her under the bus after a raft of bad headlines. The pro-independence National newspaper has been derided by an MSP as

If a line is repeated often enough it becomes true. Or true enough, anyway. This, at any rate, is one of the axiomatic rules of modern politics. He who controls the ballyhooed “narrative” owns the truth. Which is why the interpretation of any given event swiftly becomes almost as important as the actual event itself. So up-pops Matt Zarb-Cousin, formerly Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman and now one of his more charming outriders on social media, to claim that it was Jezzah what has saved the Labour party in Scotland. As he puts it, “Corbyn’s supporters have long argued that returning Labour to its socialist roots would be necessary if the party

Step One: Businessman criticises independence. In this case, Les Montgomery, chief executive of the Highland Spring mineral water brand. On Sunday, he told PA: ‘Businesses are fed up. The Scottish Government should be getting on with the job they are there to do. Focusing on employment, investment, those kinds of things. Independence isn’t the job that the Scottish Government is supposed to be doing.’ Step Two: Scottish Government calls businessman. After being told of Montgomery’s remarks, SNP economy minister Keith Brown instructed officials to contact Highland Spring to see if they would like to ‘discuss them further’. Highland Spring confirmed that it was approached by the Scottish Government but wouldn’t

As you approach the Scottish Parliament from the Royal Mile, a modest curve juts out from the obnoxious angles. This camber, the Canongate Wall, is studded with 26 slates of Scottish stone each bearing a quotation from the Bible and scriveners of more questionable repute. Among them is the instruction to ‘work as if you live in the early days of a better nation’, etched on Iona marble and attributed to the novelist Alasdair Gray. The words are totemic for Scottish nationalists, a rallying cry heard often during the 2014 referendum. And why not? They bear the promise of national rebirth, of hope in even the darkest days.  Inside, where

I have an awkward relationship with the House of Lords. On the one hand, it regularly proves a doughty guardian of liberties against a rash, headline-chasing executive. On the other hand, it’s the House of Lords. Hereditary peers, bishops, Liberal Democrats — the clientele are a rum lot. We don’t have our constitutional troubles to seek but we might want to look at getting ourselves one of those elected upper chambers, albeit one independent of Downing Street and party managers.  Nevertheless, the Lords has its uses, and one of the most welcome is bringing experience to government. A good example is Ian Duncan, the Scottish Tory MEP who is reported to

The deposed Scottish Nationalist MP for East Lothian, George Kerevan, found solace this week in the words of a distinguished former editor of The Spectator. Kerevan tweeted: ‘I believe every Scotsman should be a Scottish nationalist’, John Buchan, House of Commons, 24 November, 1932.’ Hundreds of disconsolate Nationalists took to their keyboards to embrace Buchan’s validation of their core belief. A retweet by my own MP, Angus MacNeil, whose devotion to Twitter greatly outweighs his capacity for research, caught my attention. The obvious conclusion was that none of them had actually read what Buchan said in his contribution to the debate on the Queen’s Speech, all those years ago. Anyone

‘Get back to the day job.’ The six magic words that delivered the Scottish Tories their best election night in decades. Ruth Davidson recited this incantation endlessly during the campaign and Labour and the Liberal Democrats quickly joined in. As messages go, it was blunt but effective, capturing the public mood that Nicola Sturgeon has allowed herself to be distracted by the independence issue.  After the UK chose to leave the EU despite Scotland’s Remain vote, the First Minister planned to parlay opposition to Brexit into support for independence. But her scheme went from no-brainer to harebrained in a breathtakingly short period of time. Like Theresa May’s snap election gamble,

Is Nicola Sturgeon, not to put too fine a point on things, losing it? Just six weeks ago this question would have seemed preposterous. But that was before the SNP’s disastrous election result. Yes, disastrous. Sure, everyone expected the SNP to lose votes and seats but no-one really thought they could lose 21; no-one really thought their share of the vote would fall by 13 points or that they would misplace almost half a million voters. No-one thought their result would be so very much worse than expected. No-one includes the opposition points and, pertinently, the SNP itself.  And in response to this, what has Nicola Sturgeon said? Only this:

When Alex Salmond lost the Scottish independence referendum, he sought to console himself and the ranks of the vanquished by declaring ‘the dream shall never die’. It was the salve that soothed the disappointment of a nationalist movement. But today that dream appears to lie in ruins. Two years ago, the SNP swept all before it, claiming 56 of Scotland’s 59 constituencies at Westminster; on last night, they lost almost 40 per cent of those same seats. The reversal cannot be overstated. Salmond, the SNP’s former leader, lost in Gordon. Angus Robertson, their leader in the Commons, lost in Moray. The party was thrown out in East Dunbartonshire after a

‘Strong and stable’, ‘weak and wobbly’, ‘coalition of chaos’: you’ve heard enough of the slogans. Now, election day is nearly upon us. Here’s the Spectator‘s guide to what to watch out for on the night as we find out whether Theresa May is heading for a big win – or an historic blunder: 10pm All eyes will be on the joint exit poll from the BBC, ITV and Sky. In 2015, this was the key moment for the Tories with the poll suggesting that the party was heading for a surprise majority. 11pm Houghton & Sunderland South – where Labour upped its majority in 2015 – is likely to be the