Scotland

At the last Labour conference before the 2026 Holyrood election, Scottish Labour is enjoying the limelight. With less than eight months to go until the Scottish parliament election, the party is trying to prove that – despite its rather dire polling – it can win. But in an increasingly fractured political world, Labour may have to rely on another political party to prop itself up if it is to have any hope of governing in Scotland. And given Nigel Farage’s tartan outfit is doing pretty well north of the border, a Labour-Reform pact – informal or not – could be one solution. But would Anas Sarwar do a deal with

To Liverpool, where politicians and delegates are gathering for Labour’s annual party conference. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has just finished his speech on the main stage, where he lead out his vision for his party with just eight months to go until next year’s Holyrood elections. But it was a non-Labour politician that dominated Sarwar’s discussion today, as Reform UK support in Scotland continues to surge. Slamming Nigel Farage as a ‘pathetic and poisonous little man’, the Scottish Labour leader fumed: You are a pathetic and poisonous little man that doesn’t care about Scotland, doesn’t understand Scotland, and that’s why Scotland will utterly reject you. All Reform can do is

It would be putting it mildly to say Sir Keir Starmer’s digital ID card plans have gone down like a lead balloon. The Prime Minister’s proposals to make ID cards compulsory for every British adult have raised concerns about freedom, data security and effectiveness – as it isn’t clear the policy would actually work to tackle illegal immigration if it was rolled out. Hardly the best start to conference season… Some of those criticising Starmer over his policy are – surprise surprise – Scottish nationalists. SNP First Minister John Swinney took to Twitter to rage: I am opposed to mandatory digital ID – people should be able to go about

After weeks of suspense, the big day has finally arrived. The Scottish government has arranged a meeting in Inverness with quango and industry bosses to discuss what is apparently one of the most pressing issues facing Scotland. Not the future of the oil and gas industry, not the failures in the country’s rural health service and not even the dualling of Scotland’s most dangerous road, which runs by the city. No – not content with bashing Westminster, the SNP government has declared a war on, er, seagulls. Ahead of today’s ‘serious’ meeting, the Scottish government dedicated £100,000 to controlling the increasingly mischievous bird population to cover gull deterrents – like lasers,

The otherwise run-of-the-mill First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament came to a dramatic conclusion this afternoon. Before the Presiding Officer moved onto the next item of business, former Conservative leader Douglas Ross made a point of order alleging that he had been assaulted by an SNP government minister. Crikey!   He told SNP First Minister John Swinney: ‘As I left the chamber yesterday, I was physically assaulted and verbally abused by your minister for parliamentary business, Jamie Hepburn.’ Ross went on to urge Swinney to confirm he takes ‘a zero-tolerance approach to threatening and intimidating behaviour by his ministers’. Talk about the bare minimum, eh? The incident followed a clash in parliament yesterday over, er,

The audacity of it! The hypocrisy! First, Nicola Sturgeon says yesterday in a TV interview that she’s ‘not that into flags’ and tells us all to ‘calm down about flags’. Then, later in the day, her successor as first minister, Humza Yousaf, chimes in with one of those creepy walking-while-talking videos in which he informs us that ‘Hate wrapped in a Saltire is still hate.’ Scotland’s flag ‘belongs to everyone’, he mawkishly intones. This, of course, comes in the context of Operation Raise the Colours, the flag raising campaign seen by some as a robust exercise in patriotism but criticised by others as intimidatory and racially motivated. The movement has spread to

As of late August, Nigel Farage’s Reform party now has representatives in local government, Westminster, the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish Parliament. The group’s only MSP is Graham Simpson, a frontline Conservative politician for almost ten years, who defected just under a fortnight ago. I caught up with him at the Reform conference – amid deafening tannoy announcements, last-minute timetable shifts and an ongoing government reshuffle – to hear more about the party’s plans for next year’s 2026 Holyrood election.  What exactly attracted Graham Simpson to Reform? ‘I saw the party as something of a blank canvas,’ he explained. The period following his defection was ‘a bit rough’, Simpson told

Kemi Badenoch’s rediscovery of the North Sea oil and gas industry would be more convincing had it not been successive Conservative governments that promoted its decline in the first place. In a speech in Aberdeen today, she will call for “every last drop” of oil to be extracted from our waters. Contrary to popular belief, there is still a lot of the black stuff lying there: up to 15 billion barrels, or enough to fuel the UK for 30 years. Norway has been drilling in the Arctic. “Bor ja Bor” (“Drill, baby, drill”), as they say in the Storting No one really knows how much is left because, while the North

The end of summer recess (in both Westminster and Holyrood) seems like a reasonable moment to leave tribal party politics at the door and assess whether 25 years of devolution in Scotland has met expectations. Has it improved the quality of life of ordinary Scots, and how it might be changed to ensure that it does better in future? I am still relatively new to politics, having enjoyed a career in business prior to being appointed a Scotland Office minister in 2021, but I was in the room long enough to experience both the satisfaction of being able to make a difference and the frustration of not being able to

The new party of the left has got off to a pretty shaky start. It doesn’t have a proper name, its co-leaders (Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana) barely get along and already left-wing activists are trying to oust party strategists. But no matter: the group is ploughing ahead and will, it transpires, be launching its first Scottish branch next month. How very interesting… Your Party – which is not the official name of the group, Sultana fumed on social media – will launch a Scottish branch in Glasgow next month, with an assembly to take place on 5 September. In a statement, the group has said: Glaswegians are champing at

Scottish Labour MSP Colin Smyth has been arrested and charged in connection with the possession of indecent images. The 52-year-old politician – who has represented the South Scotland constituency for a decade – was taken into custody at a Dumfries property earlier this month and a police investigation has been launched. The Scottish Labour party suspended Smyth after he was charged, with the politician now an independent MSP. A party spokesperson said: The whip has been removed from Colin Smyth MSP, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further on this matter while the investigation is ongoing. A Police Scotland spokesperson added: On Tuesday, August 5, 2025, officers executed a warrant

It’s not a good time to be in Scottish Labour. With nine months to go until the 2026 Holyrood election, the party is still trailing behind the SNP and, at times, Reform UK. And things aren’t going well at a local level either: in recent months the party has suspended five councillors over inappropriate conduct and today one of these, Fife council’s David Graham, has been jailed for 27 months after the 43-year-old was found guilty for sexually abusing a vulnerable teenager. Good heavens… A by-election will be held in Fife’s Buckhaven, Methil and Wemyss Villages ward in due course – with opposition parties keeping tabs on a number of

Throughout her memoir, Nicola Sturgeon emphasises her achievement in becoming the first female first minister of Scotland. While that achievement should not be underestimated, I’m sure I’m not the only woman who wishes she made a better job of it.   In her political afterlife, as in her political life, she evades real scrutiny It’s not just her determined blind spot on the implications of self-identification for women’s rights which emerges from this memoir, but also the fact that her much trumpeted support for women, including those under attack in the public forum, seems not to extend to those who dare to disagree with her.   There is widespread recognition

When someone one day writes a true history of Scotland during the baleful tenure of Nicola Sturgeon and reflects on what brought about her downfall as first minister, ‘Isla’ Bryson might be worth a footnote but J.K. Rowling surely merits a chapter. No one has managed to articulate the opposition case to Sturgeon with the verve, intelligence and penetrating wit of the Harry Potter author.   Rowling’s review of Frankly, Sturgeon’s recently published memoir, is in many ways as brilliant as her other mainly tweeted thrusts. It is incisive and damming, outclassing her adversary and doing so with courage humour and originality. In other ways though it misses the mark, failing, as many