Scotland

The SNP’s internecine warfare has dominated political chatter for the past two months and the Scottish Conservatives, it seems, have been feeling left out. So, at the weekend, the Tories piped up. Douglas Ross, the Scottish leader, suggested that unionists should use their vote at the next general election for the candidate most likely to defeat the SNP incumbent.  The party in London was indignant with Ross’s apparent approval of Tory voters crossing the box for Labour and arming Sir Keir Starmer with more MPs. This is hardly the first time that the Scottish party and its London HQ have had a difference of opinion. This particular disagreement has the

New party leaders usually deliver their party a boost in the polls. One of the first signs that voters were not comfortable with Liz Truss as their Prime Minister was the absence of any rise in Conservative fortunes following her success last September in securing the keys to 10 Downing St. Those doubts were then simply strongly amplified when the financial markets reacted adversely to her ‘fiscal event’ in which she and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, proposed to fund tax cuts via borrowing.  Even if Yes voters’ faith in independence continues to be undiminished, their support for the SNP no longer appears unconditional. Half a year later, her successor, Rishi

If Keir Starmer wins the next general election, today’s interview by Douglas Ross will be seen as a point in that victory. To have the Scottish Tory leader suggest that Scots vote, not for his party, but for Labour in seats where Team Starmer is the strongest opponent to the SNP, is quite remarkable – and a signal that the SNP is not the only party in Scotland with serious leadership issues. ‘I will always encourage Scottish Conservative voters to vote Scottish Conservative,’ he has told the Sunday Telegraph. But when it comes to creating more of these Scottish Tory voters ‘I think generally the public can see, and they

More keeps pouring out about the Scottish National party’s culture of secrecy. As revealed by the Times today, deputy leader Keith Brown suggested in 2021, four months after the police investigation into party finances – Operation Branchform – had commenced, that the SNP should produce a monthly summary of income and expenditure. Two key figures, Douglas Chapman and Joanna Cherry, had already resigned from their posts over concerns about party transparency, while several members of the finance committee had also quit. Yet Peter Murrell, chief executive of the SNP, shut down Brown’s plans. Brown compiled a 40-page transparency report for the party which concluded: ‘It is imperative that the workings

The SNP’s week goes from bad to worse. The party’s long-term auditing firm has resigned, according to reports today. Accountants Johnston Carmichael, which has worked with the party for over a decade, said that the decision followed a review of its client portfolio. The firm is understood to have resigned before the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell on Wednesday, according to the BBC. The SNP must now present their accounts to the Electoral Commission by early July or else face possible sanctions under political funding laws. The nationalists are currently looking for a replacement firm as political parties with an income or expenditure of more than £250,000 are

For all his praising of Nicola Sturgeon’s governance and Peter Murrell as an ‘election winner’, it now looks as though continuity candidate Humza Yousaf is cutting ties with the SNP establishment. Questioned on the raid of his predecessor’s house and the party’s Edinburgh headquarters, Yousaf has, for the first time, dared to criticise his former boss. Speaking to journalists at his official residence Bute House today, Yousaf commented that he was ‘very, very clear that the governance of the party was not as it should be’ and that ‘a review of transparency…is clearly needed’. Questioned on how the new First Minister will keep an eye on party finances, he replied:

Scotland’s cancer wait times have hit the worst levels on record, as shown by a Public Health Scotland report that was released today. Under 72 per cent of eligible patients received their first cancer treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred in the quarter ending 31 December 2022, while the target is 95 per cent. This revelation comes less than a week after new health secretary Michael Matheson was appointed to Humza Yousaf’s cabinet, and will make for uncomfortable viewing. Of 4,262 eligible patients who were referred urgently for cancer treatment, over 1,200 were left waiting for more than 62 days after they had been referred before they received

As he took office last week commentators, myself included, compared the new First Minister Humza Yousaf to Liz Truss, the chaotic, unpopular and short-lived former leader of the Conservative Party. Yousaf is similarly unpopular with voters, has a record of serial ministerial failure and, like Truss, has surrounded himself with a cabinet of cronies.  Nor is Yousaf expected to linger very long in Bute House.  Right on cue, the first poll since Humza’s installation as FM shows the SNP lead over Labour cut to 6 per cent – enough for the nationalists to lose 18 seats in next year’s general election.  However, now we have seen the First Minister’s priorities after his first week

It’s less than a week since Humza Yousaf triumphed in the SNP leadership election by less than 2,500 votes and already his tactical wizardry is bearing fruit. Yousaf’s first decision on taking at Bute House was to humiliate Kate Forbes, the woman who took on and almost defeated the entire party machine, by offering her the job of Rural Affairs – a significant demotion from Finance Secretary. She instead quit the government with her replacement, Shona Robison, rubbing salt in the wound by suggesting Forbes told Yousaf that she wanted to spend more time with her family. Such suggestions have clearly irked Forbes, who has come out fighting in an

Westminster is not plotting to steal powers from Holyrood or roll back devolution, contrary to the campfire stories the Scottish establishment likes to scare itself with. In reality, neither Labour nor the Tories are interested in considering what impact Holyrood has had on the Union.  It’s peculiar, given both parties have self-interested reasons for rethinking the arrangements of devolution. Less than a decade into the experiment, the SNP had seized control of Holyrood and unilaterally renamed the Scottish executive ‘the Scottish government’. The party has used the Scottish government, and the UK civil servants who staff it, to plot both independence and a separate Scottish foreign policy, despite both matters