Alex Massie

Counter-insurgency operations, as any army officer could tell you, are a messy business in which the consequences of failure are always easier to measure and appreciate than the rewards of victory. Moreover, even limited success in one area – the destruction of the enemy’s ‘human resources’, for instance – can be offset by the manner in

When all else fails, I suppose, you can just plead for mercy. That appears to be the message emanating from the Scottish Labour party’s conference in Perth this weekend. The theme, Kezia Dugdale says, is “Take a fresh look” at Labour. OK. [Awkward silence.] Now what? The thing is, you see, that “Take a fresh look” has been the

Is anyone so dreary as the man who’s never happy except when he’s unhappy? Perhaps only the man who ceaselessly agitates for something only to reject it when it’s given him. Consider, by way of a random illustration of this phenomenon, the case of Pete Wishart, the SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire. A

You can’t say we weren’t warned. Jeremy Corbyn is nothing if not consistent. When he casts his baleful, weary, disappointed, eye around the world he knows what he sees: a world bought and sold by American gold, aided and abetted, as always, by its snivelling junior, British, partner. So Cuba is not an island gulag

The problem with Nicola Sturgeon is that she is, by the standards of contemporary politics, unusually straightforward. There is little artifice and even less deceit about Scotland’s First Minister. What you see is what you get; what she says is what she mostly means. That is, even when she’s sidling past the truth it’s clear

The thing about politics is that it is, you know, political. One of the consequences of Labour’s Scottish immolation is that Conservative ministers no longer feel the need to consult Labour grandees about what to do with Scotland. Gordon Brown’s advice is no longer required; the voices of Douglas Alexander and Alistair Darling need no longer

The trouble with remakes is they almost always disappoint. This is so even, especially, when they have larger budgets, bigger ‘names’, and higher production values. Something gets lost and for those in the know the first, original, movie will always remain the best. So it is with referendums. The plebiscite on Britain’s membership of the

London, eh? What a ghastly place. A seething, impenetrable, web of humanity. A vast, choking, metropolis that is, once again, one of the dark places of the world. A vision of hell, frankly. That, at any rate, would appear to be what Theresa May, the Home Secretary, thinks. If she did not think this, if

The great thing about the ‘new politics’ – or at least the new politics we have lately been privileged to endure here in Scotland – is that it’s just as fetid and grubby as the old politics it replaced. The band may change but the music remains the same. Consider the twin controversies swirling around the

On its own terms, I imagine Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to the Labour conference can be considered tolerably acceptable. Much of it, after all, consisted of time-served bromides with which almost no-one could reasonably disagree. It was a Marx and apple-pie speech that omitted most of Marx. And who dislikes pie? Nevertheless, what was new was not

This morning Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party, outlined the extent to which she agrees with Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish National Party. Both wish Scotland, and indeed the United Kingdom, to remain a member of the European Union. It is true, as Ms Davidson noted, that the SNP oppose

The answer to this question, it turns out, comes from Kenny Dalglish. The answer is mebbys aye, mebbys naw. At the weekend the Scottish party’s former leader suggested Labour should have (some kind of) ‘free vote’ in the event of there being another independence referendum. Kezia Dugdale, the latest occupant of this poisoned throne, conceded Labour MSPs should,

Nicola Sturgeon got one thing right this morning. A year on from the independence referendum, Scotland’s First Minister allowed that the plebiscite “invited us, individually and collectively, to imagine the kind of country we wanted to live in”. The answer, you may be surprised to be reminded, was Britain. Surprised, because it has since become commonplace

Most people in this country still have no idea who Jeremy Corbyn is. He exists in a fog of curiosity. Who is this guy? What does his election mean? Where are we going? Well, they are about to find out. I am not surprised Corbyn has handed John McDonnell the plum job of being Shadow

I suppose it should not be a surprise that the virtue signalling over the appalling plight of Syrian refugees displaced by that country’s monstrous civil war has now reached fresh heights of absurdity. Nor that some of the press coverage of this dreadful crisis is edging towards a post-Diana level of mawkishness. One front page this morning shouts at

The silly season is supposed to end tomorrow. September sidles in and normality replaces August’s frivolity. The reality of winter will be with us soon enough, too. That, at any rate, is the theory but it seems, on both sides of the Atlantic, that sillyness is likely to last for some time yet. There’s the twin

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Willie Horton and Michael Dukakis. That’s what Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to prominence will do to a fellow. Horton, you will remember, was the convicted murderer who never returned from a weekend furlough granted to him while Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts, and subsequently kidnapped a couple in Maryland, stabbing the

No, Nicola Sturgeon does not have much reason to be worried about Jeremy Corbyn. But the rest of the country does. To borrow from the tabloids, Corbyn is The Most Dangerous Man in Britain because, though no-one in London seems to appreciate this, he could be the man whose leadership of the Labour party leads to the