Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
The thing about being holier than thou is that you actually have to be holier. Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s leader at Westminster, has made much of Sir Keir Starmer’s freebie woes. The SNP called for an investigation into Lord Alli’s donations to the Prime Minister and Flynn used a newspaper column to observe: ‘Of course,
A brief update from Agence France Presse underscores the shift in power in the Middle East. The report, citing a German source, tells us that Joe Biden ‘plans to meet the leaders of Germany, France and Britain in Berlin on Saturday to discuss the Middle East and Ukraine conflicts’. On Saturday. It doesn’t exactly scream
Ruth Cadbury is hard at work campaigning for Kamala Harris ahead of November’s presidential election. It’s what you might expect from a Democrat politician, except that Cadbury is British, a Labour MP, and New Hampshire falls a little outside the boundaries of her Brentford and Isleworth constituency. She’s not the only British politico heading Stateside
Iranian missiles are slicing through the evening sky over Tel Aviv as Tehran responds to the killing of Hezbollah leader and terrorist mastermind Hassan Nasrallah. Some reports on Israeli television put the number of missiles at 100, while the head of emergency medical organisation Magen David Adom has told Channel 12 that the number is
There is a satirical Israeli song from the Second Lebanon War, ‘Yalla Ya Nasrallah’, with the chorus: ‘Come on, oh Nasrallah/We will screw you, inshallah/we’ll send you back to Allah/with the rest of Hezbollah’. The lyrics are doggerel, but I mention it for two reasons. One, it’s an absolute banger of a tune and, two,
Israel has carried out a daring air strike against Hezbollah’s headquarters. The Islamist terror group’s underground command centre, located below civilian buildings in Dahieh, Beirut, was hit by what Israeli media are describing as ‘tens of tons of explosives’ on Friday night. There are unconfirmed reports that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was the target of
The public response to Sir Keir Starmer and his ministers accepting gifts from Labour donors and others has been what you might expect: rhymes with ‘snouts in the trough’. However, popular indignation is not universal and there is a cohort who are outraged by the outrage. They believe the real villainy lies not with ministers
Can you be a progressive without being po-faced? I wonder sometimes, especially when I read that public health minister Andrew Gwynne is considering ‘tightening up the hours of operation’ for pubs. The Telegraph reports that Gwynne told Labour conference that changes had to be contemplated because of ‘concerns that people are drinking too much’. After
Labour’s first conference from government in 14 years might not be taking place against an ideal backdrop, with the Prime Minister and other ministers under scrutiny for accepting designer clobber and other goodies from party donors, but there is an unlikely glimmer of hope in the form of Anas Sarwar. Unlikely, that is, because Sarwar
Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, is being cancelled for calling Haitian immigrants the N-word. One problem: he didn’t. Lowry was on Megyn Kelly’s podcast to talk about the claims, amplified by Donald Trump and JD Vance, that Haitians have been snacking on local cats in Springfield, Ohio. He commented on a combative interview Vance
After coasting his way to No. 10, Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership has got off to a pretty cursed start. Some of this wasn’t his fault, such as the Southport riots, and some has come from enacting policies that, while controversial, represent rational political choices, such as means-testing the winter fuel payment and early release of
The question of whether to scrap winter fuel payments to all but the poorest retirees is a very British debate, in that it’s any sort of debate at all. Rachel Reeves’s reforms are estimated to save £1.3 billion this year and £1.5 billion in subsequent years. That’s not nothing but, for a sense of scale,
The SNP hasn’t wanted for its woes lately but now there is fresh trouble on the way. Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, tells the BBC it is ‘unlikely’ that her party will vote for the next Scottish government budget after the Nationalists unveiled £500 million in cuts aimed at balancing Holyrood’s books. Many
The Scottish Conservative leadership election is now Russell Findlay’s to lose. The West Scotland MSP has secured three big endorsements: former Scottish Secretaries Lord Forsyth and David Mundell, and shadow Scottish Secretary John Lamont. It means all five Scottish Tory MPs support his campaign, alongside 12 MSPs, two council leaders and leading party donors Alasdair
The 1997 Christmas special of The Mrs Merton Show probably doesn’t feature in many people’s formative political memories, but it remains with me more than a quarter-century later. Caroline Aherne, as the bitchy old biddy who made celebrities squirm, turned her smiling-assassin interview style on Edwina Currie, there to flog a book. After introducing her
Something interesting is happening in the Scottish Conservative leadership election, and while I appreciate you might be sceptical about the juxtaposition of ‘interesting’ and ‘Scottish Conservative’, there is a certain dynamic at play. Unlike the race for UK Tory leader, the contest is not between left and right, for there isn’t really a right to
During his time as Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond was accused by the Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont of fostering a ‘something for nothing’ culture with vote-grabbing policies like free university tuition, free prescriptions and a council tax freeze – expensive gimmicks that took cash away from where it was needed most. Lamont’s analysis was
Russell Findlay has launched his bid to be the next Scottish Tory leader as the party descends into a civil war over the propriety of the electoral process. The UK Conservative leadership race has thus far been a pretty staid affair. Not so the Scottish party, which is on the hunt for a new figurehead
Every now and then, I find myself in the strange position of trying to convince Scottish nationalists not to train their pitchforks on SNP MSP John Mason, who is known for his mercurial pronouncements. This time he has been suspended from the party whip for disputing the assertion that Israel is conducting a genocide in
The Scottish nationalists are aggrieved. What’s new, I hear you ask. Well, a diplomatic row, one which has prompted some decidedly undiplomatic language. The Scottish establishment is worked up after it emerged that Angus Robertson, the Scottish government’s pretendy foreign secretary, met with Daniela Grudsky. Who’s she? Why, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom. Their
