Scotland

Lawyers with an awkward agenda can be a thorn in the government’s side in Scotland as much as in England. Last year, for example, they persuaded the Court of Session to refuse a green light to Nicola Sturgeon’s bright idea for a unilateral Indyref2; and in a much higher profile case a couple of years earlier convinced the same court that the SNP had unlawfully and quite unfairly botched its investigation into Alex Salmond. But the Scots legal profession is by tradition forcefully independent, if anything even more so than its English counterpart. Broadly, Scottish solicitors are regulated by the Law Society of Scotland, and advocates by the Faulty of Advocates.

In May 2020 Douglas Ross resigned from Boris Johnson’s government. Though only a junior minister in the Scotland Office – Ross was not at that time a member of the Holyrood parliament or leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party – Ross was still the most senior figure to resign in protest at how the government handled the Dominic Cummings affair. Ross was clear: Cummings had plainly broken the government’s own Covid rules and, this being so, decency demanded he clear his desk. No-one, not even the great Cummings, could be thought indispensable. As it happens, the Cummings story broke just a couple of days after the Prime Minister and his then fiancee attended a BYOB post-work piss-up in Downing Street.

This is the time of year when economists and political scientists make their predictions for the upcoming 12 months. Will we finally see the back of Covid and economic recovery? Will Boris Johnson survive as Prime Minister? In Scotland, the politerati are speculating on what Nicola Sturgeon's next move on the constitution will be. It seems likely the Scottish government will introduce a bill, without the agreement of Westminster, on a second independence referendum. This is expected to be challenged at the UK Supreme Court. The most likely outcome of that is the referendum bill failing on the grounds that it goes beyond the constitutional powers of the devolved parliament — a UK Supreme Court case earlier this year reinforced the view this will be the most probable conclusion.

Nationalism, grievance politics and a refusal to accept results which don't go your way are not the only things Nicola Sturgeon has in common with Donald Trump. For Scotland's First Minister has launched something of a war on the press in recent weeks, repeatedly rubbishing reporters and outlets which dare to question her handling of Covid.  Unfortunately for Sturgeon, this crusade against supposed 'fake news' has worked about as well as the SNP's handling of education, health and criminal justice over the past 14 years. For her hapless Holyrood government has been forced into no less than three U-turns in five days – despite Sturgeon ridiculing journalists who point out the error of her ways, something noted by Sun hack Chris Musson.

Ping! An email in Steerpike's inbox lands, subject line: 'SNP's attack on refs.' Is this, at last, a moment of nationalist self-reflection? Have the 45 per cent-ers finally clocked most Scots don't want another plebiscite? Could some SNP drone finally have switched off the autopilot to question the wisdom of a neverendum? Sadly for Scotland, the answer to all these questions is: no. For it seems that James Dornan, the hard-of-thinking MSP who frequently features in Steerpike's pages, is once again up to his usual tricks.

How should police record a rape where the culprit has male genitalia? The answer might appear to be straightforward: a man is responsible. Yet in Scotland, where the SNP's obsession with avoiding offence appears to trump reality, things could soon be more complicated. Police Scotland have said that they may log rapes as being carried out by a woman if the alleged culprit identifies as such. This absurd situation was revealed by Gary Ritchie, assistant chief constable, who set out scenarios where this might happen. It includes 'where a person born male obtains a full gender recognition certificate (GRC) and then commits rape' and 'where a person born male but who identifies as a female and does not have a full GRC...commits rape'.

‘I hope the sterlingisation zombie now has a stake through the heart,’ tweeted SNP delegate Tim Rideout after getting his resolution on ‘The Scottish Reserve Bank Establishment Bill’ passed at his party’s conference last weekend. Rideout sits on the SNP’s policy committee and is part of a faction challenging the SNP leadership’s plan for Scotland to informally use the pound for a prolonged period after secession – a policy known as sterlingisation. This faction wants to see Scotland establish a new currency, controlled by a new Scottish central bank, as soon as possible after exit day. In his conference speech, Rideout was blunt.

The Scottish National Party’s great and continuing success has been to mobilize a large part of the Scottish population to see England and the English as a more or less malign force. In this, the party has connected with and deepened strong currents of thought and belief in Scots culture, especially in the 20th century. The country’s most famed and lauded poet, Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Grieve), its most influential ideologist, Tom Nairn and its most prominent literary novelist, James Kelman have all adopted long-running acidic views of the southern neighbour.

It's the SNP's second annual national conference this weekend and already the organ-grinders are turning out their favourite hits. The National – a self-described newspaper in breach of the Trade Descriptions Act – has again combined the stridency of Pravda with the editorial values of the Beano. Adoring coverage of the conference was kicked off with its opening day headline: "'Shameful' Tory plan for 'Union division' in the army" – a 'story' about the British Army being, er, proud of Britain. Elsewhere Kate Forbes, the neophyte nationalist, has insisted that independence, not health or education, will dominate the four-day rally – because God forbid the state of public services be of interest to the party or the nation.

For months now, Mr S has chronicled the tribulations of Susan Aitken, who is the first SNP leader of Glasgow City Council and appears determined to be the last, too. She has presided over a waste crisis in which refuse-strewn streets have become a familiar sight even in the city's leafier suburbs and which threatened to embarrass locals on the world stage ahead of COP26.  Challenged on this, Aitken insisted Glasgow needed only 'a spruce up’. When that didn't work, she trained her fire on her critics, detecting in the concerns of the GMB union ‘a real echo of the language that some far-right organisations have used’ and telling Sir Keir Starmer he was ‘on pretty shaky ground as a London MP, coming up and telling Glasgow that we’re filthy’.