On Wednesday it will be the tenth anniversary of the independence referendum. This is always a poignant time of year for me, not only because of the what might have been had Scotland grasped the thistle and chosen independence on that fateful day, but because this time of year is also…

It’s only been nine weeks but we already have resounding answer to the question of how much influence Labour’s Scottish branch office has over policy making in Keir Starmer’s government. The answer to that question is none at all. Prior to July’s Westminster general election Anas Sarwar loudly proclaimed that he…

Last weekend, there were elections in the Germans states of Thuringia and Saxony. In both these states the far right Alternative für Deutschland party, which favours the ‘repatriation’ of immigrants and even of some naturalised German citizens – the ones who are muslim or not white of course – performed alarmingly…

With the SNP conference about to start and the post mortem of the party’s poor performance in July’s Westminster general election under way, it’s fair to say that there is now general agreement within the wider Scottish independence movement that the independence strategy inherited from Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon is…

Words have a dictionary definition, they also have emotional colouring which can be either positive or negative, that emotional coloration is an essential part of the word’s meaning and it is disingenuous to use a word with a strongly negative emotional colouring and to pretend that your use of the word…

To paraphrase the famous phrase attributed to the American author Mark Twain, there’s lies, damn lies, and Westminster promises to Scotland. The respect agenda and the promise of greater devolution made to Scotland by the Better Together parties during 2014’s Scottish independence referendum were comprehensively trashed by the Conservatives in the…

Do you remember how during the SNP leadership contest in 2022 that Kate Forbes uttered some fairly measured criticisms of the record of her rival Humza Yousaf and the Scottish media dined out on how nasty and bitter the leadership race had become? It’s the Scottish Tories’ turn for a leadership…

This decision has been brewing for a while now, but it’s time to give up on Twitter, a platform which has now been comprehensively captured by racists, the far right and the culture warriors. Twitter was always problematic, but since it was taken over by controversial billionaire Elon Musk it has…

There’s a striking feature of the media’s coverage of the outbreak of far right violence which has overtaken much of England in recent days. For the most part it is being presented as a British issue when it is in fact an English one. The Sunday Times has the headline “Riots…

One of the most alarming and worrying developments in British politics in recent years has been the normalisation and acceptance into the mainstream of far right Anglo-British nationalist politics. The BBC has played a major role in this process with its constant platforming of the odious Nigel Farage and his not…

Spare thought for poor Anas Sarwar, who rarely misses an opportunity to brush off his best sneery face and take to the airwaves on BBC Scotland, sticking it to the SNP. He must have been so looking forward to the gloatathon that his branch office winning the Westminster general election in…

The Labour Party has said that it will withdraw the party whip from any MP who votes to scrap the two-child benefit cap tonight. The Labour party is punishing its MPs who vote to repeal a Tory measure which has been described as an engine driving a huge growth in child…

On Thurday, the preliminary findings of the UK Covid Inquiry were published. Baroness Hallett, the chair of the inquiry summarised the findings as: “The processes planning and policy of the civil contingency structures across the UK failed the citizens of all four nations of the United Kingdom.” And how was this…

Now that the dust has started to settle on the outcome of the Westminster election and the SNP’s not so shock defeat, it’s time to reflect on what the result holds for the future – not just in Scotland but across the rest of the UK as well. The first takeaway…

Sorry for not updating the blog sooner but both my other half and I have been fighting off a very nasty chest infection with bad coughs and a temperature. He has had it far worse than I did, but I am almost back to what passes for normal now and he…