Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator.
The headline figures in today’s YouGov poll for The Times are brutal for Scottish Labour. Labour (27 percent) are still 20 points behind the SNP (48%). But that’s the good news. Because everything else is even worse. Consider this: 95 percent of SNP supporters think Nicola Sturgeon is doing a good job. That’s impressive or, if you prefer, slightly
Even by the standards of the Conservative and Unionist (sic) party this is an impressively stupid poster. Do they really want to encourage Scots to vote for the SNP? Evidently they do. Of course we know why. Every seat Labour lose in Scotland makes it less and less likely Labour will emerge from the election
I don’t know about you but I tend to think Sir John Chilcot’s report into the Iraq war should not be published before it is finished. Actually, I do know about you and I know I hold to the minority view on this matter. So be it. Fashionable opinion is not on my side. Then
The suggestion Mitt Romney might make another run for the Presidency of the United States made me think of a line from one of my father’s novels: ‘There’s nothing so sad as the memory of lost fucks.’ There’s a measure of wistful sadness but also some wry resignation. The obvious reaction is that, hey Mittens, third
Nigel Farage has performed a useful public service this week. Yes, really, he has. The UKIP leader, you see, is a believer in Root Causes. He is, in fact, a Root Causer and, like every member of that miserable tribe, liable to see every event as confirming the righteousness of his own longstanding, stale-breathed, prejudices. You
Following the success of the Tories’ last anti-UKIP strategy session, I’ve been leaked details of the latest election planning at CCHQ: […] I say, what’s the most damaging – and widely-held – perception about the Conservatives? Hmmm. That we’re the party for the rich? Most unfair, I think we can all agree. Right, moving on, what’s
It is important, today especially, to remember that this is nothing new. We have been here before. On the 11th of July, 1991, Hitoshi Igarachi was murdered in his office at the University of Tsukuba. His crime? He had translated The Satanic Verses into Japanese. That was all. Eight days previously Ettore Capriola, the novel’s Italian translator, had
We’ve just had two years of intensive constitutional politics. Time enough, you’d think, for even London-based politicians and commentators to work out how British politics actually works. But if you think that you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Consider our old friend the Barnett Formula. Antiquated and not entirely fit for purpose – it being a
Behold, the most offensive tweet I’ve seen in months. You don’t have to be an off-grid anarcho-libertarian freedom-squirrel to see there’s something distinctly unpleasant – even something dystopian – about this. But such, alas, is the temper of our times. Times in which the state’s officers – for such is McPlod – believe they are
Here, earlier than is traditional, are the answers to this year’s Christmas Quiz. As always scoring is discretional but if five marks are awarded for an entirely correct answer then the maximum total possible is 100 points. It is also, of course, possible to get the answer correct even while failing to answer some of
Greetings from the Isle of Jura whence the sixth (!) edition of this blogs’ annual Christmas Quiz comes to you wherever you may be cloistered this festive season. As always you can enlist Google to assist you; as always doing so seems pointless and contrary to the spirit of the occasion. But it’s up to you.
Next year’s general election looks like being the most gruesomely entertaining in years. Entertaining because no-one knows what is going to happen; gruesome because of the protagonists and the sorry misfortune that someone has to win it. All we can say for certain is that the Lib Dems will receive a doing. I still don’t think
The conventional wisdom, at least in Britain, seems to be that Barack Obama’s presidency has been a desperate disappointment. That is partly a reflection of the extravagant – impossibly so – expectation that accompanied him to the White House and partly, of course, a simple reminder of political reality. And yet it seems to me
We knew and we knew years ago. Anyone who has been paying attention has known for a long time that the CIA committed appalling acts of brutality in the years after 9/11. Anyone who paid attention has also long known that the agency’s torture regime – not too strong a way of putting it –
If sport is a quest for the epic it is also, at the highest echelons, a tilt at immortality. Phillip Hughes has achieved that in the most unconscionable fashion. He will be remembered for as long as the game is played. He is another member of the What might Have Been club. This, of course,
Is it acceptable for writers to sport their political allegiances publicly? In more sensible times you’d hardly need to consider the question since its answer would ordinarily be so bleedin’ obvious. These, of course, are neither sensible nor ordinary times. So it is with the fauxtroversy over whether or not it is acceptable – or, worse, appropriate – for
Nearly 20 years ago, during one of the many impasses on the road to ‘peace’ in Northern Ireland, Gerry Adams reminded his opponents that the republican movement would set the terms of any agreement. The IRA reserved a power of veto. ‘They haven’t gone away, you know,’ he said. Scotland is not Ulster, of course, but
Sometimes it is the small things that tell you everything you need to know about the madness afflicting British politics at present. Consider this small detail from the new immigration bill: All proposed marriages and civil partnerships involving a non-EEA national with limited or no immigration status in the UK are to be referred by
Say this for the current state of British politics: it keeps finding new lows. A while back I made the mistake of suggesting voters might already have priced-in Ed Miliband’s shortcomings. The leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition might be a doofus but we know that and, if not exactly tickled by the thought, can
And so the Age of Nicola dawns. Elected First Minister by the Scottish Parliament yesterday; sworn in this morning. Taking First Minister’s Questions this afternoon. Alex Salmond’s departure was a long drawn-out affair but it will not take Nicola Sturgeon anything like as long to leave her own distinct impression on Scottish politics. I am
