Catriona Stewart is a freelance journalist, broadcaster and political commentator in Scotland and vice-chair of Women in Journalism Scotland. She is a former Herald columnist.
When Scotland’s Freedom of Information legislation was brought before the Scottish parliament 20 years ago, the serving deputy first minister Jim Wallace told MSPs that enhanced openness would lead to better scrutiny and, therefore, to ‘increased public confidence in decisions that are made which affect people’s lives’. The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act has been,
At long last, Scottish Labour has clearly and decisively set out its position on gender self-identification. Party leader Anas Sarwar and his deputy Jackie Baillie have now robustly stated the case that Scottish Labour supports single-sex spaces based on biological sex. Good, clear, precise messaging of the type entirely absent from the SNP leadership – and
Shona Robison’s big fiscal announcement this week should have been the Scottish government’s plans to mitigate the deeply unpopular winter fuel payment cut imposed by UK Labour. The nationalists went early on revealing the scheme, however, doing so a week before the budget after being pushed by some smart manoeuvring from Scottish Labour. Anas Sarwar,
Of all the self-inflicted harm to have felled politicians and undermined governments, was there ever a more curious case than that of self-ID and the SNP? In so bullishly battling the cause of Gender Recognition Reform (GRR), that would have allowed for trans-identifying people to self-declare their new gender, the SNP suffered the largest backbench
South of the border, a Labour majority is a foregone conclusion. Yet in Scotland, in almost all 57 seats, contests are predicted to be tight. ‘Knife-edge,’ is the phrase heard on repeat, most recently from First Minister John Swinney. While the Scottish central belt has drawn intense interest – given polls have consistently suggested there will
It is no surprise that the Scottish Conservative manifesto launch was centred on independence. While Scotland’s Tories talk about the SNP’s obsession with the subject, they are a little less happy to mention their own preoccupation with separatism. It’s rather more awkward for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party to admit that, without independence on
In a general election campaign that has oftentimes presented scenarios that feel like a fever dream, the surreal headlines keep coming. ‘Sir Keir Starmer agrees with Sir Tony Blair,’ we read this week, ‘that a man has a penis and a woman has a vagina’. Newspaper articles focused on two Labour leaders in simpatico and
