Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
The Scottish papers carry two difficult polls for Downing Street. One, from Survation, puts support for independence at 50/50; another, from Panelbase, has it at 52 per cent in favour and 48 per cent against. The cursed percentages. I say difficult polls for Downing Street rather than Westminster in general because the Union — not
Richard Burgon is an idiot. Yes, I know you subscribe to The Spectator expecting more high-brow invective but I believe in being direct. Now, ordinarily I’d be in favour of leaving such a simple creature to his own devices, but this is the Labour Party we’re talking about, so Daisley’s First Law applies: The worst
Polls come and go and the YouGov survey showing support for Scottish independence at 51 per cent should be read with that in mind. The Nationalists have been ahead before and have fallen behind again. What Downing Street cannot take in its stride is this: five years since the Scottish referendum, and with the SNP
One of the great myths of Scottish higher education is that it’s free. Outside observers can be forgiven for making this error because Nicola Sturgeon asserts it so very often. She has boasted that ‘one of this government’s proudest achievements is the restoration of free higher education’, claimed to ‘stand for universal services, such as…
The proposal to relocate the House of Lords to York is harmless enough, though residents of York might disagree. The idea of an upper chamber of philosopher kings to check democratic excitability is sound in principle but when your definition of a philosopher king extends to John Prescott, you begin to question the merits of
Ian Murray is standing for a post last won by a Scot 88 years ago. Since its creation in 1922, the deputy leadership of the Labour Party has been filled by five Londoners, four Welshmen, three Yorkshiremen, two Lancastrians, one Cumbrian, one Plymothian and William Graham, the solitary Scot. Graham was also an Edinburgh MP,
Boris Johnson’s refusal to grant a second independence referendum is a source of relief rather than joy for Scottish unionists. Unionists won decisively in 2014 but their opponents’ failure to accept the referendum result has held Scotland in constitutional limbo ever since. Five years on a permanent campaign has been as healthy for the body
Nicola Sturgeon’s reshuffle of her Westminster team is more than a post-election shake-up of the Nationalist front bench. For one thing, it represents a shift to the next generation. Mhairi Black (25), who became something of a political superstar upon her election in 2015, has been promoted to Scotland spokeswoman; freshly elected Stephen Flynn (31)
Two weeks ago, I asked what kind of prime minister Boris Johnson might be and whether he could be ‘the great disruptor’ on foreign policy, defying standard practices and elite assumptions as Donald Trump has. I think I might have my answer. On Trump’s decision to take out Iranian terrorist-in-chief Qasem Soleimani, the Prime Minister
The defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party has afforded little respite to British Jews. Residents of Hampstead and Belsize Park woke on Sunday to storefronts and a synagogue daubed in the Star of David and ‘9/11’, apparently invoking the conspiracy theory that Jews were behind the September 11 attacks. December has been sweeps
Much of the post-election attention has gone on the next stage of Brexit and the government’s attempts to set down a domestic reform agenda that works for the Tories’ new northern constituencies. As such, the Integrated Security, Defence and Foreign Policy Review, briefed as ‘the deepest review of Britain’s security, defence, and foreign policy since
Thursday was a routing for Labour but the reckoning is still to come. Four years into the Corbyn project, and two years after it should have happened, the country crushed the Labour party for embracing the most extreme and dangerous figure in mainstream British politics since Oswald Mosley. For British Jews, who have been put
It’s just an exit poll. They can be wrong. They were, substantially, in 1992 and lowballed the Tory result in 2015. Those caveats stated, we have to address that number for the SNP. Fifty-five seats, every seat but four north of the border, would represent the Nationalists’ best result since 2015. Before polls closed, SNP
At the outbreak of World War I, the Jewish Chronicle, which had been wary of conflict with Germany, threw its support behind the war effort in a leader proclaiming: ‘England has been all she could be to Jews, Jews will be all they can be to England.’ A banner reading the same and urging Jews
Nicola Sturgeon has had a change of heart. Gone are the ultimatums, the stridency and the self-righteous rhetoric. In an interview with today’s Daily Record, we see Sturgeon the Introspective: ‘Brexit gave me an insight, maybe that I didn’t have before, of how No voters would have felt had the referendum on independence gone the
‘Racists are racists are racists and Jeremy Corbyn is a racist.’ Yair Lapid is not mincing his words. One of the leaders of Israel’s main centre-left party broke with protocol this morning at a conference in Jerusalem to urge British voters not to elect Jeremy Corbyn. He said the Labour leader was an anti-Semite, but
For at least a generation — something we define loosely up here — Scottish hacks have been trying to interest London newsdesks in Scotland’s role in general elections. Then, in 2015, we had the good fortune of Scotland deciding to up and turn into a one-party state overnight. Then, in 2017, we revised our arrangements
The decline of the Liberal Democrats continues to give Labour a boost and rattle Tory nerves. Middle class Remainers who dislike Jeremy Corbyn are nonetheless deciding that he is their last best chance to thwart Brexit. Electing an anti-Semitic government so you don’t need to show a passport at Paris Charles de Gaulle is quite
Jo Swinson’s ordeal at the hands of Andrew Neil dramatised (painfully) the anguish of being a liberal in an age of populism. The Liberal Democrats are the ultimate fence-sitters, the men too broadminded to take their own side in a quarrel, per Robert Frost’s aphorism. But in this election they have tried to represent the
There are many reasons why I am suspicious of the Conservatives’ current lead in the polls. The Tories may have peaked too soon. Labour voters flirting with the Liberal Democrats could return the more they see of Jo Swinson. Many Conservative target seats, while Brexity, have voted Labour since there was a Labour Party to
