Author: Speymouth

Mapping Scotland

Speymouth December 2, 2022

Mapping Scotland in a time of change: From Stone Voices to The Atlas of Scotland Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland, Neal Ascherson, Granta Books Here Lies Our Land, Kathleen Jamie, Scottish Poetry Library Reviewed by Andrew Redmond Barr If someone asked you to imagine Scotland, there’s a good chance you’d imagine something close to […] Source

The inevitable backlash

Speymouth December 1, 2022

Oh dear, how sad, never mind. The ruling of the UK Supreme Court last week that Scotland must get back in its box and that there is no internal Scottish democratic process which can bring about another independence referendum has singularly failed to stop the independence movement in its tracks as…

Scotland scunnered with rule by House of so-called “Lords”

Speymouth November 28, 2022

A proposal that Scotland’s Secretary of State Alister Jack should postpone taking up his controversial peerage until the next general election in order to avoid a by-election in his marginal seat of Dumfries and Galloway is being condemned as an attempt to play the system, in a new scandal for…

Explaining the obvious to self-serving British nationalists

Speymouth November 28, 2022

In the days since the historic Supreme Court ruling that Scotland has no right to an independence referendum through its own internal democratic processes, and the incomprehensible decision of the court that Scotland has no right to self-determination as it is neither oppessed, a colony, nor denied a meaningful say in…

Scottish Labour’s Dilemma

Speymouth November 27, 2022

Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision generated a wave of commentary regarding the strategic impasse of the independence movement and Nicola Sturgeon’s future as leader of the SNP. (You can read my pessimistic take, for the New Left Review’s Sidecar blog, here.) But amidst the crashing constitutional debris, one salient political fact seems to have been overlooked: Scottish […] Source

Being Supreme, Becoming Ungovernable

Speymouth November 27, 2022

The ramifications from this week’s Supreme Court ruling continue to unfold. For some there’s a shrug of the shoulders, a contemptuous ‘told you so’ and a wry ‘this changes nothing’. For others on the left it is more apocalyptic – the final nail in the coffin of Scottish independence, as they have long predicted. The […] Source

Cleaning the Augean Stables

Speymouth November 26, 2022

Cleaned out the Augean Stables which is Bella’s Comments section. This editor has a lot of patience but not infinite patience. People are welcome to come and disagree and argue all day and all night long and share dissenting views and tell me this is all rubbish. What you are no welcome to do is […] Source

The Pyrrhic victory

Speymouth November 24, 2022

Wednesday was a very big day for the Scottish independence campaign. Scotland is imprisoned in a failed democracy that refuses to accept the outcome of Scottish elections that are not to the liking of the Anglo-British nationalist parties. We now find ourselves in a so-called voluntary union which is indeed voluntary,…