Stephen Daisley

Few ministers are tested as abruptly as Kate Forbes has been. The SNP’s junior finance minister was promoted to the Scottish cabinet ten days ago and three weeks after Derek Mackay’s resignation forced her to deliver the budget with hours’ notice. Nicola Sturgeon’s minority government can typically rely on the dutiful support of the nationalist

How do you save a party that doesn’t want to be saved? Tony Blair doesn’t know but it hasn’t stop him trying. He is now warning Labour against retreating into a safe space of identity politics and angry, hectoring progressivism. Specifically, he has in mind the transgender movement and its astonishingly swift march through the

Nicola Sturgeon has told Andrew Marr: ‘I do intend to lead my party into the next Scottish Parliament election and hopefully win that and stay as First Minister.’ What’s this all about, then? Didn’t she just record a stonking General Election victory north of the border? Yes, she did. Isn’t polling support for the SNP

Living in Scotland, it’s depressing to hear the way UK Government ministers talk about immigration. I have one proposal in front of me right now that advocates ‘a points-based approach’ as part of ‘a controlled immigration system to meet our own economic, social and demographic priorities and needs’. Anyone who wishes to ‘work, study or

The SNP’s ability to defy political gravity — a poll conducted last month put them on 51 per cent in Holyrood voting intentions — is easier to understand when you consider the alternatives. Jackson Carlaw, unveiled on Friday as Ruth Davidson’s successor at the helm of the Scottish Tories, is a pleasant chap with a certain

I knew if we waited long enough, the United Nations would make itself useful. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has produced a handy catalogue of companies that supporters of Israel can give their business to. Of course, this was not Michelle Bachelet’s intention. Bachelet is the commissioner and before that

Has Boris Johnson made the first major error of his premiership? Choosing his adviser over his Chancellor could be seen as a bold gamble of the sort that won him a sweeping election victory and got the UK out of the European Union. We of little faith in the commentariat have often misread this prime

If Labour had chosen Liz Kendall instead of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, she’d be prime minister by now. She was young. She had ideas. Inevitably, she got 4.5 per cent of the vote. It is therefore my solemn duty to inform Lisa Nandy that I consider her the best candidate for Labour leader. On balance,

‘You want the dowry, but you don’t like the bride’ is how Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol summed up his colleagues’ wish to keep Judea and Samaria but not the Arabs living there. I feel much the same about right-wingers losing their shizzle over a report in the Sunday Telegraph about new taxes being mulled

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

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