Snp

‘Is Home Rule the only realistic alternative to independence?’ was the question posed at a Spectator debate, sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, in Edinburgh last week. In one sense the question is redundant since, no matter how much some nationalists claim otherwise, there is no reasonable or realistic scenario in which it is possible to envisage the United Kingdom government scrapping the Scottish parliament. Some measure of Home Rule, therefore, is indeed the only realistic alternative to independence? But what is Home Rule? As the panel agreed (not least since this has long been obvious) there is no agreed or even satisfactory definition of Home Rule. Is it, as the journalist

Writing in the Herald this week Iain Macwhirter noted that “Any trace of ethnic nationalism, and anti-English sentiment, was expunged from the [Scottish National] party in the 1970s”.  Responding to this JK Rowling – of whom you may have heard – suggested this was “Quite a claim”, suspecting that plenty of English-born Scottish residents might take a slightly different view. This, obviously, made for great Twittering and, equally predictably, gave plenty of people enough characters with which to hang themselves. Tiresomely, they are both correct. As nationalist parties go, the SNP really is a remarkably broad church. It imposes no kind of genetic test upon its members. Many of them were not born

The new chairs of the select committees have been announced. Before 2009, the party whips handed out the chairmanships of these committees but now they are voted in by MPs. As well as several returning chairs, there are a few interesting new appointments. Labour’s Frank Field will be an effective chair of the Work and Pensions committee, holding the government to account over roll out of Universal Credit and the £12 billion cuts to welfare spending. Jesse Norman steps back into the limelight as chair of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, after being passed over for a job in the new government. Andrew Tyrie and Keith Vaz remain in

As a general rule I prefer the stupidity theory to the mendacity concept of politics. That is, if a politician says something obviously wrong it is more probably because they are thicker than mince than because they wish to deceive the public. There are some exceptions to this usual rule but, most of the time, dumb beats cunning. Occasionally, however, dumb can also be cunning. Consider this statement from Angus Brendan MacNeil, MP for the Western Isles, as recorded by Hansard: Now Mr MacNeil, bless him, often fumbles his way towards wishful thinking but this will not quite do. The Vow, no matter how ballyhooed it may be these days, said precisely

Jim Murphy is quitting frontline politics with a bang. The outgoing leader of the Scottish Labour party addressed Policy Exchange this afternoon, offering his thoughts on why Labour lost the election and did so badly north of the border. Murphy revealed that he thinks another independence referendum is inevitable: ‘There will be another referendum whenever the SNP can get away with it. Why wouldn’t there? If you were an insurgent nationalist party with unprecedented power and with an absolute majority of parliamentarians in both parliaments, why wouldn’t you try and engineer certain circumstances that get you another referendum? ‘My frustration is that Cameron is so lame-assly dumb on it that he

Will the country be torn apart by the EU referendum? That’s the argument made by Chris Deerin on the capitalist running dog website CapX. Deerin, a Scottish Unionist, says it’s now Great Britain’s turn to go through the same painful and divisive process that Scotland endured last year. Personally I doubt that will happen, although it’s possible that a slender vote in favour of remaining in the EU may in the long term be divisive. The main problem with the analogy is that there is just no Ukip equivalent of the aggressive Scottish nationalists who shouted at Jim Murphy. There is a Kipper version of the Cybernats, but even online

Harriet Harman has 16 years on David Cameron and she used that advantage very effectively today. After Cameron replied to her first question on the EU referendum with a string of mocking quips about Labour’s mass conversion on the subject, Harman scolded him for gloating and told him to ‘show a bit more class’. This dressing down took Cameron aback. For the rest of the session he wasn’t sure whether to tone it down or mock Harman for complaining. With Harman refusing to play along with the usual Punch and Judy show, Cameron turned to the SNP. He took advantage of Angus Robertson’s questions to mock the Nationalists for saying

The first PMQs after an election victory is a moment to savour for a Prime Minister. He knows that the result gives him a trump card he can play again and again. So, it was unsurprising that Harriet Harman made little progress against Cameron. He treated it as a gentle net session, meeting each question with a slightly more aggressive and expansive answer. He did, though, seem slightly discombobulated by Ed Balls’ absence. Early on he made a joke about Balls’ defeat and then looked over to where Balls used to sit to drive the point home, but Balls – of course — wasn’t there. The main event today, though,

Neither man will much care for the comparison but, more than ever, Alex Salmond is rather like Gordon Brown. Each struggles to admit their opponents might ever have a point and that said point might be held in good faith. More importantly, each has the habit of thinking their opponents lesser mortals simply because they dare to take a different view on the great issues of the day. I thought of this today when I saw Salmond’s remarks responding to the sad news about Charlie Kennedy’s death. They were revealing remarks, just not in any way that flatters the former First Minister. Salmond, like everyone else, acknowledged Kennedy’s essential decency

As the new SNP MPs settle in to their new life in the House of Commons, a picture is doing the rounds on social media showing a Commons Chamber that is near-deserted, save the SNP benches, which are packed. The caption from the BBC Parliament channel is ‘MPs are debating safety at HM Naval Base Clyde where the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent is stationed’. The point that SNP supporters and some of the party’s MPs are making is that this shows that the party turns up to debates while other parties can’t be bothered. It’s a powerful image, and it is not a fake. There is, of course, an explanation as

‘The art of politics is not to lie,’ claimed Alex Salmond on last night’s This Week. A noble sentiment for sure, but Mr S feels it’s his duty to remind readers of a story that broke in October 2013. The Telegraph reported that ‘Alex Salmond spent almost £20,000 of taxpayers’ money to keep secret legal advice about an independent Scotland’s EU status that never even existed’. Although Salmond suggested in a television interview that he had received advice from Scottish Government law officers on the matter, it later transpired that ‘no specific legal advice’ existed. Shall we just leave it at that?