The world is becoming a very dark and dangerous place. It’s not only the continuing war in Ukraine and the destruction and death being wrought in the Middle East, but there is also the alarming rise of fascism in Western countries. In the USA the Republicans have turned into an overtly…

One of the loudest claims of Better Together during the 2014 independence referendum campaign was that the Westminster system guaranteed vastly superior standards of democracy and civil liberties than anything Scotland could provide for itself, and that in an independent Scotland peaceful protest and the espousal of constitutional positions opposed to…

There’s something striking about the Scottish media’s treatment of the current constitutional impasse blocking the path to a second independence referendum. The Scottish media portrays this as exclusively a problem for the SNP, and no consideration is given to the anti-democratic stance of the British nationalist parties in both blocking any…

Keir Starmer is a coward. During Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Starmer had six questions for Rishi Sunak, not one of which related to the topic which dominates the news headlines and which it’s no exaggeration to say threatens the outbreak of actual world war three. But it still wasn’t important…

Last week, Labour won two by elections in formerly safe Conservative seats in Tamworth in Staffordshire and Mid Bedfordshire, in both cases Labour overturned huge Conservative majorities. In Tamworth the Conservatives had won 66.3% of the vote at the general election in 2019, making it one of the safest Conservative seats…

In some parallel universe where British democracy is a functioning reality and the Scottish media is fair, balanced, and truly representative of the views of the population it is supposed to serve, today, Thursday 19 October 2023, would have seen the holding of the second Scottish independence referendum, a referendum which…

It’s the blink and you’d miss it SNP party conference, the conference of the largest political party in Scotland, the party of the Scottish Government and the third largest party in the House of Commons entered its second day on Monday. Not that you’d know this from most of the British…

The SNP party conference is due to start in Aberdeen on Sunday, nevertheless that didn’t stop a reporter on Sky News as the Labour conference came to a close this week remarking that the end of the Labour conference brought the party conference season to a close. The SNP is still…

This is an expanded and extended version of an article I wrote for The National on Friday. There’s only really one story in town this weekend in Scottish politics, Labour’s not entirely unexpected win in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by election. There is no denying that the result is a…

The Conspiracy party conference has finally drawn to a shambolic close. The day after the Tory party conference ends always feels a bit like the first time you go outside after being ill with projectile vomiting and diarrhoea for a few days. Your head is slowly clearing but you still have…

I’m a bit late with this blog piece because I had a physiotherapy appointment on Friday and then we had friends from London staying over for the weekend. But things are back on track now. Last week Keir Starmer was in Scotland to insist that Labour is “the change that Scotland…

Party conference season is upon us, the time of year when politicians make speeches aimed at pleasing their party’s base and the rest of us switch off. These are likely to be the last party conferences before the Westminster general election which is due next year, and the parties will be…

There can be no doubt by now that the Labour party is in the business of peddling exactly the same right wing Anglo-British exceptionalist nationalism as the Conservatives. It’s the politics of fantasy and goal post shifting. Keir Starmer’s Brexit plans have been dismissed as “delusional” by leading European commentators. Wolfgang…

An opinion poll carried out by Find Out Now was published this week showing that a majority in Scotland would vote Yes for independence if Westminster were to permit a vote, a vote which neither the Labour nor the Conservative parties will concede to because they fear that the No campaign…

In this week’s episode of “You’ve got some cheek” brought to you by the Labour Party’s Scottish Optional Identity Mark, Douglas Alexander has claimed that the past decade in Scotland has been lost to “constitutional squabbling,” and nothing has been achieved. To be fair, the last decade in Scottish politics was…