Iain Macwhirter is a former BBC TV presenter and was political commentator for The Herald between 1999 and 2022. He is an author of Road to Referendum and Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum but Lost Scotland.
Every election is historic in its own way, and of course the top line this 2024 general election is Labour’s humongous parliamentary majority. Though never can a landslide have been delivered with so little voter enthusiasm. But something equally significant happened in the wee small hours of the morning. For, an existential threat that has arguably hung
As the hours tick down to polling day, Scottish nationalists are beginning to assess the damage this election campaign has inflicted on the cause of Scottish independence. Far from being a springboard to a second independence referendum, as Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf had forecast, it looks set to draw a line under the wave
The road to hell, as we all know, is paved with good intentions. It is also lined with reams of paper policies which inhibit action, increase bureaucracy and achieve contradictory results. The ones who generally benefit are the high priests of the bureaucratic order: lawyers, consultants, academics and NGOs. So no prizes for guessing who will
Women in Scotland have a difficult choice to make in this election. Those whoomen, that is, who are concerned about a return of any version of the infamous Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and the policy of allowing transgender people to self-identify as another sex. It looks very much as if only the Conservative party
Judges on the Supreme Court appear to have joined Just Stop Oil. In a landmark ruling, with profound implications for the UK energy industry, they’ve said that Surrey County Council cannot give permission to drill new wells on an existing extraction site, Horse Hill, which already has a couple of them. This is because the oil
Line one page one of the SNP manifesto is, as promised, about independence. If the SNP wins a majority of seats it will ‘be empowered to begin immediate negotiations with the UK government to give democratic effect to Scotland becoming an independent country’. Well in your dreams. No one seriously believes that independence is coming, even
Why did it take Nigel Farage to suggest clawing back some of the super profits pocketed recently by British banks? Why hasn’t Labour thought of stopping the Bank of England paying interest on the deposits of commercial banks? There is, after all, plenty of money for the taking. In 2023, HSBC reported a record net
Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, has said he’ll resign after the 4 July election following criticism of his treatment of a rival Tory candidate and questions over his expenses. It is unusual, to say the least, for a party leader to announce their intention to step down during a general election campaign rather than after it. Even
You thought things couldn’t get worse for the Conservative party in this election? They just did. The Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, has announced that he is to resign his leadership following yet another alleged scandal concerning a Tory politician. Few in Ross’s own party can keep up with the twists and turns of his political
It had been called the dinner party from hell. A seven-strong convention of the also rans. But only one dinner guest really mattered: Nigel Farage. The populist politician’s last-minute decision to stand as a Reform candidate in Clacton has struck fear into the hearts of Conservative MPs across the country, but especially in the 60 marginal
Scottish Tory Leader Douglas Ross has a side hustle as an assistant referee for the Scottish Football Association. Now, Scotland’s opposition parties are showing him the red card for his last minute decision to stand as parliamentary candidate for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency. It’s a ‘stitch up,’ says the SNP. Ross is being cast
When Alex Salmond was leader of the SNP he used to complain bitterly to the broadcasters that it was unfair to stage TV debates with three unionist party leaders – Labour, Conservatives and the Lib Dems – against the one nationalist. In last night’s Scottish leaders debate though, the unionist imbalance hardly figured. That is
It is five years since Labour’s then equalities spokeswoman, Dawn Butler, told a BBC interviewer that babies aren’t born with a sex. It was the high point of transgender ideology, which captivated all the politician parties to some extent in the 2010s. Even the Tory minister, Penny Mordaunt, told MPs in 2018 that ‘trans women are women trans men are men’
This week, the Edinburgh Book Festival has joined the Hay Literary Festival in abandoning its sponsorship deal with the investment group Baillie Gifford, due to the firm’s investments in the oil industry and its supposed links to the war in Gaza. The decision to ditch Baillie Gifford comes after a campaign by Fossil Free Books, whose leading
John Swinney has said that he will make sure the public sees enough of him over the election campaign. But do they want to? In the latest Survation poll, conducted for True North over the weekend he is now the third most popular leader in this race of also-rans, with an approval rating of -7. Sir Keir
It is less than three years since Nicola Sturgeon was taking selfies with Greta Thunberg at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. Now in this election the climate, if you’ll excuse the pun, has changed beyond all recognition. Gone is the moral posturing and climate alarmism of recent years as the Scottish parties desperately roll
There is a distinct air of unreality about the position of the Scottish Labour party as it enters this election campaign. Frankly, many in the party don’t believe opinion polls suggesting, as YouGov did last week, that they are 10 per cent ahead of the SNP and could return up to 35 MPs on 4
The last time John Swinney was leader of the SNP, 20 years ago, the party went on to return only six MPs in the next general election. Labour returned 41 north of the border. Swinney had resigned the year before, but this was his electoral legacy. The party has had a traumatic year since the precipitate
There is a weary inevitability about Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, promising to ‘eradicate child poverty’ as his ‘single most important objective’. We’ve been here before. Both Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon promised to do exactly the same. Indeed, those of us with long memories recall the Scottish Labour minister, Wendy Alexander, vowing in 1999 at the dawn
After nearly 17 years in office the Scottish government has finally accepted the truth: it is incompetent. It has declared a National Housing Emergency – effectively a vote of no confidence in itself. ‘Honest’ First Minister John Swinney has thrown up his hands and said: it’s a fair cop, in anticipation of the Scottish parliament
