I just wanted to thank everyone who contributed to or supported this year’s Wee Ginger Dug fundraiser. I was even more apprehensive about it this year than I have been in years past. There is a cost of living crisis which has had a severe impact on the budgets of many…

On Wednesday in the House of Commons, just as Prime Minister’s Questions was about to begin, the Conservative MP for Dover, Natalie Elphicke, crossed the floor of the chamber and sat on the opposition benches , becoming the latest Tory MP to rebel against Rishi Sunak and his hapless leadership of…

The Labour party loves to claim that it speaks for the ordinary working people of Scotland. Like so much that issues from the centre-right British nationalist flag fetishising party of Keir Starmer that claim is a shameful barefaced lie. Under Starmer the Labour party is interested only in articulating policies which…

Keir Starmer published a piece in The Observer this sunday entitled “It’s time to end the UK’s divisions: Labour is for everyone.” The piece is an intelligence insulting and utterly vacuous content free word salad with a room temperature IQ. Absolutely nowhere in its 625 self regarding words does Starmer tell…

While we’ve been preoccupied with the drama of Humza Yousaf’s resignation, the votes of no confidence in Holyrood and an SNP leadership contest which turned out not to be that dramatic after all, elsewhere politics was continuing as usual, the Tories were torying in their normal chaotic and nasty way while…

The SNP leadership contest was over even before it had begun, no doubt much to the disappointment of BBC Scotland management who will now have to bin all the ‘SNP divided’ stories they were going to regale us with over the coming weeks as a distraction from the meltdown of the…

As expected the Scottish Government has survived the Labour vote of no-confidence brought forward by Anas Sarwar seeking to opportunistically capitalise on the collapse of the Bute House Agreement between the SNP with the Greens. The Greens had already signalled that their beef was with Humza Yousaf and had been mollified…

It has been just over a week since the blog’s annual fundraiser was launched and I thought readers might like a quick update since it’s not clear from the Go Fund Me page alone how the fundraiser is going. The total received from all sources, PayPal, Go Fund Me, and direct…

Humza Yousaf’s efforts to find a way through the two votes of no confidence expected this week have proven unsuccessful, and he has stepped down as First Minister. The infuriated Greens have refused overtures from the SNP to back Humza Yousaf in the Tory vote of no confidence. By siding with…

Back in 2014 in the immediate aftermath of the independence referendum, I published a piece about the importance of keeping the flame of hope alive. Right now, we need that flame of hope more than ever, the candle is guttering and the storm winds of despair are blowing stronger than ever….

It’s that time of the year with the blog that always makes me apprehensive, the annual crowd funder. I am launching it a bit early this year as there is a lot of chatter about an early general election and I don’t want it to fall into the official election campaign…

The big story in Scottish politics today is the one that cannot really be commented on due to Scotland’s strict laws about contempt of court and not saying anything in public which might prejudice the outcome of criminal proceedings. Last week former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell, the husband of former…

The fundamental plank of the devolution settlement is the Sewel Convention, which states that the Westminster government will not interfere with the powers of the Scottish Parliament or intrude upon devolved competencies without the consent of Holyrood. This convention is vital if devolution is to work in a British constitutional system…

Anas Sarwar, the branch manager of the Labour party’s Scottish accounting unit, gave a speech over the weekend which was breathtakingly hypocritical and mendacious even by the standards of a party for whom breathtaking mendacious hypocrisy is very much its USP. Speaking ahead of the STUC congress which is being held…

Voters in most of the UK have a very clear choice at the next Westminster general election, they can vote for the British flag shagging party, or they can vote for the British flag shagging party. Keir Starmer constantly boasts about how he has changed the Labour party, it is not…