Stephen Daisley

A parliament is an odd place. It’s the arena where clashing worldviews come to cross swords and there’s low and ugly skullduggery. In most other workplaces, political differences are a topic to be avoided, but the job of a parliamentarian is to spend day after day with colleagues whose values they abhor and whose ideas

Kenny MacAskill has won the leadership of Alba and just to underscore how cursed that position is, he defeated his rival Ash Regan by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Alba is the party founded by Alex Salmond following an exit from the SNP that wasn’t entirely amicable. (You might have read about it.)

Southside Central is the kind of ward Scottish Labour needs to be winning. It’s in Glasgow, home to significant pockets of deprivation within the Gorbals and Govanhill, and has a substantial population of Scots of Pakistani heritage. If there is a path to a Labour government after the 2026 Holyrood elections, it runs through communities

Here’s a political conundrum for you. You’re the SNP. You’ve been in power in Scotland since 2007. You’re 13 points ahead in the polls one year out from the next Holyrood election. You’ve been stumbling these past few years but you’ve finally found your feet again. Your leader is less divisive than his predecessors and

As Nicola Sturgeon announces that she is standing down from the Scottish parliament, it is worth reflecting on what a gilded political life she led – and how she managed to fritter it all away and leave frontline politics with no legacy, or at least none she’d care to be remembered by. The former Glasgow

‘There are judges in Jerusalem,’ Menachem Begin is reputed to have proclaimed, following a court ruling which he believed vindicated one of his policy positions.  The phrase has been appropriated by critics of judicial reform and others keen to see Bagatz, the Israeli supreme court, remain a bulwark against illiberal overreach by the government. ‘There are judges

The Trump-Zelensky summit is a geopolitical Rashomon. Some saw a lying, maniacal bully and his snarling sidekick berate a patriot for telling the truth about his nation’s attacker and refusing to surrender to him. Others witnessed a bratty ingrate haughtily shaking his begging bowl while dictating to his benefactors the terms on which he would

Every time the Palestinians rebuff a peace proposal, commentators reach for an observation by the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban: ‘The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ It’s pithy, and depressingly accurate, but I’ve always been more struck by another Eban aphorism: ‘Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other

There is a perception that Scotland is a socialist basket case where a mammoth public sector is showered with English money, and I’m here to tell you that this perception is racist, offensive and… not entirely without foundation. The latest Scottish budget analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) examines public sector pay north

Sidney Low said that ‘government in England is government by amateurs’, and parliament seems to be doing its level best to vindicate that view. The Assisted Dying Bill being rushed through the Commons with sinister alacrity has exposed structural flaws in our legislative procedures, not least the vulnerability of private members’ bills to exploitation by

In all the argle-bargle over Donald Trump’s proposal for Gaza, there have been countless questions about legality, morality and feasibility. Isn’t the population transfer he suggests tantamount to ethnic cleansing? On what legal basis would the United States assert sovereignty over Gaza and enter into contracts with developers and investors? How could a country that

Once you get beyond trade and maritime borders, you will find that much of international law is, pace Clausewitz, the continuation of policy by other means. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was continuing policy by other means when it issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The two stand

Turning around a government that has lost its way is one of the trickiest feats in politics, all the more so if that government has enjoyed a long stretch of incumbency. The big beasts are gone, everyone who’s left is exhausted, the voter coalition is coming apart, and some begin to question the party’s purpose

Rachel from accounts is settling up. In a speech at Siemens Healthineers near Oxford, the Chancellor signalled her commitment to development by backing a third runway at Heathrow, placing her on a collision course with net-zeroers, Nimbys and the other forces of decline. The interests ranged against her are mighty and loud, but if she

Should the Southport killer swing? Lee Anderson thinks so. The Reform MP posted an image of a noose on X, with the words: ‘No apologies here. This is what is required!’ It’s not the first time Anderson has backed the return of the rope, and not the first time I’ve contended that he’s wrong, but

Coulter’s Law, named after its originator, the right-wing polemicist Ann Coulter, holds that the longer it takes the authorities or the news media to identify the suspect in a terrorist attack or other notorious incident the less likely that suspect is to be white. Allow me to propose a British corollary to this rule: the