Scotland

For victims of the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, this week is an important one. Paula Vennells, former chief executive of the Post Office, is set to face three days of tough questioning when she gives evidence to the inquiry into the scandal. Vennell’s highly anticipated appearance on Wednesday follows critical developments north of the border where, last week, the Scottish government announced it will push ahead with its own compensation scheme for subpostmasters. In an underreported but highly significant move, Scotland’s Crown Office also stripped the Post Office of its status as a specialist reporting agency. In the process, it inadvertently refocused attention back to Scotland’s

Twenty-five years have passed since the opening of the Scottish parliament and the issue of just how well devolution is working is a rather awkward one for the current SNP-led government. This week, both the Scottish Conservative and Scottish Labour parties have made entirely clear that reform is needed. Labour believes that Scottish mayors might be the answer; some Conservatives want a complete overhaul of the way laws are scrutinised. The question is: would either solution work? The fact that the SNP broke the Scottish parliament is hardly new. It became clear in 2014, during a meeting of Holyrood’s European and External Affairs Committee. An expert witness, law professor Adam

The SNP’s Dear Leader never manages to stay out of the spotlight for long. Nicola Sturgeon is back on the speech circuit, this time appearing at Edinburgh University to bestow her wisdom upon some unfortunate souls. In her time away from the Holyrood frontbenches — during which she has spoken only a handful of times in the Chamber — it appears Sturgeon has been busy rewriting history. For at last night’s event, the Queen of Nats claimed that politics has changed since she resigned from the top job. Now, she claims, controversial policies ‘descend into the most vicious, toxic rammy, with bad faith arguments all over the place’. Er, has

If you thought the Scottish Greens couldn’t get any battier, then strap in. Patrick Harvie’s barmy army has ramped up its baffling stance on gender politics and is now expelling party members for declaring that ‘sex is a biological reality’. There really are no words… The eco-zealots have turned on their own membership after a handful of activist members signed the ‘Scottish Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights’ in a protest against the party’s position on gender issues. The unofficial declaration asserts that sex is a ‘biological reality’, women have a right to maintain sex-based protections as in the Equality Act, lesbians are same-sex attracted and ‘women and girls have

After nearly 17 years in office the Scottish government has finally accepted the truth: it is incompetent. It has declared a National Housing Emergency – effectively a vote of no confidence in itself. ‘Honest’ First Minister John Swinney has thrown up his hands and said: it’s a fair cop, in anticipation of the Scottish parliament passing a Labour motion to the same effect this afternoon. The ‘emergency’ doesn’t actually commit the Scottish government to doing anything specific, but it is clearly an unprecedented admission of failure. The ‘emergency’ doesn’t actually commit the Scottish government to doing anything Perhaps Honest John should now declare a health emergency, since NHS waiting lists

Back to Scotland, where hapless Humza Yousaf is still managing to cause the SNP problems even after his resignation. It’s been over a month since Yousaf’s controversial Hate Crime Act came into force, and it still isn’t going down particularly well with the people of Scotland — to put things mildly. It now transpires that almost half of all Scots would rather it be repealed, according to a new Savanta poll for the Scotsman. Talk about a flop… The rather revealing survey, which polled 1,080 Scots between May 3-8, found that 49 per cent of Scots thought the new law should be repealed. Only 36 per cent felt it should

Winnie Ewing, SNP royalty – Madame Écosse to those who had served alongside her in the European Parliament – opened proceedings with a song in her voice and a twinkle in her eye. ‘The Scottish Parliament,’ said the oldest of its new members, ‘adjourned on 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened’. Applause rang out across the debating chamber. The sense of optimism, and possibility, was palpable on the morning of Wednesday, May 12, 1999. On the 25th anniversary of devolution, the mood is very different.  Holyrood was supposed to be home to a new kind of politics but, of course, there is no such thing. Today,

There may be a new First Minister in the driving seat but can the SNP overtake Labour’s lead in the polls? Just this morning, Savanta revealed that, for the very first time in the pollster’s history, Labour is four points ahead of the SNP in Westminster voting intention. It’s certainly not the best start to the job for freshly-appointed John Swinney… And despite officially leading his country for about, er, two days, Swinney is already facing dissent over his decision-making. In a move that was widely anticipated, the First Minister made Kate Forbes his second-in-command – much to the dismay of the Scottish Greens. The eco-activists promptly fell into fits

What comes around goes around. John Swinney has this afternoon become Scotland’s seventh First Minister after being appointed, unopposed, as SNP leader on Monday. It was a coronation event like no other – where Swinney was threatened by a contest from a rank and file activist within his own party after hapless Humza Yousaf paved the way to his own resignation. Now, the veteran Nat and former SNP leader has swooped into government from the backbenches in a move that some hint was a little more scripted than first thought… Today, Swinney faced off challenges for the top job from the leaders of the Scottish Labour party, the Scottish Conservatives

And so we have it: a nationalist coronation, as yet another First Minister resigns. John Swinney, formerly Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy FM and onetime leader of the SNP himself, has been elected – unopposed – as the new leader of the Scottish National party. Thought to have been parachuted in by the party establishment, Swinney’s coronation was almost foiled by ‘flatulence in a trance‘ SNP activist Graeme McCormick who, by some quirk in the SNP’s constitution, had enough nominations to stand against the MSP for the leadership. But, at the eleventh hour, the renegade backed down after having ‘lengthy and fruitful’ talks with Swinney himself. Branded the ‘unity’ candidate, the new

If you want to know how deep is the crisis in which the Scottish National Party currently finds itself, let this sink in: the next leader of the party will be a man who’s already had the job and made an absolute mess of it. In a remarkable turn of events following the resignation of Humza Yousaf on Monday, senior SNP figures quickly began urging John Swinney – who served as Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy when she was First Minister – to enter the contest to replace him. This morning, Swinney accepted their challenge and announced his candidacy to become SNP leader and, thus, Scotland’s seventh First Minister since the establishment

News just in: Scotland’s Crown Office has still not received a report from Police Scotland about the SNP’s former chief executive Peter Murrell — almost a fortnight after he was rearrested and charged with embezzlement. Talk about taking things slowly… The husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon was taken into police custody for the second time on 18 April as part of the police probe into SNP finances — and charged with embezzling funds from his own party. Yet two weeks on, there has been little sign of the case progressing. Shortly after the police force announced that it had charged the former SNP chief, it transpired that Murrell