Stephen Daisley

The Scottish Government may have overreached for the first time in its response to Covid-19. Today MSPs will vote on the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill, which grants Scottish Ministers emergency powers to tackle the outbreak and suspends or amends the legal status quo in some important areas. Physical attendance in court will no longer be required unless a judge specifically instructs it; instead, appearances will be made ‘by electronic means’. Ministers will be able to permit the release of prison inmates in the event of custodial transmission (lifers and those convicted of sex crimes will not be eligible).

What will we do without Jeremy Corbyn? We may never find out given how long it’s taking him to leave the stage. Even Sinatra’s farewell tour didn’t last this long. The problem is that Corbyn wants to be useful. While that would certainly be a change of pace, it places the onus on others to find a use for him. His disciples propose that he be kept on the front bench, perhaps as shadow foreign secretary, marking their progression through all six stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and Richard Burgon. There is a cruelty to all this. No one who has watched the video of Corbyn ambling around in the street encouraging his neighbours to applaud the NHS will have failed to feel some pang of pity for the man.

Alex Salmond has been cleared of sexual assault following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh. The jury returned this afternoon and found the former First Minister not guilty of 12 charges and resorted to Scotland’s special not proven verdict on a 13th allegation. Salmond’s twin defences were that the claims against him were ‘exaggerations’ (he wasn’t perfect but he had never done anything criminal) or ‘deliberate fabrications for a political purpose’ (he was the victim of a conspiracy). In private, much of the Scottish political and media class already had him hanged, drawn and quartered and so this verdict is being met with a mixture of shock, horror and contempt. But the law is the law and the law says he didn’t do it.

The hashtag #torygenocide was trending on Twitter all day Sunday. This is because seemingly rational people have got it into their heads that Boris Johnson is using the Covid-19 outbreak to orchestrate a social cull in the UK. There is a debate over the wisdom of the strategy the government has been advised to take by the chief scientific adviser. Robert Peston asks a question about testing that, if I’m honest, makes me wonder about the wisdom of how we’re going about this. Still, I am not a scientist. I don’t know whether Downing Street has taken the right or the wrong approach. I’m happy for others to have that debate. This is not that. This is not a scholarly exchange on the merits of ‘herd immunity’ or social distancing.

In the past week, the Boris Bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland has changed into a Tory Tunnel and been ridiculed by a leading think tank. The Prime Minister’s plans for the bridge may have morphed but they have not disappeared, as the Fraser of Allander Institute would like to see. The respected policy shop looked at the tunnel's growth potential, climate impact, connectivity and opportunity costs and concluded: ‘It won’t deliver the economic boost some claim, it isn’t a priority, it would go to the wrong location, it wouldn’t be consistent with climate change objectives, and the money could be better spent on other things. Apart from that, it’s a cracking idea.

As Pete Buttigieg ‘suspends’ (read: ends) his campaign for the Democrat nomination, a few words are in order about the first openly gay presidential candidate from a major party. One of the most remarkable aspects of Buttigieg’s run — unthinkable even a decade ago — is that his homosexuality was more of an issue in the gay press than in the mainstream media. He was somewhat caricatured as a Leave It to Beaver gay: he and his husband Chasten look for all the world like your average middle-class suburban marrieds. They’re chablis and J Crew sweaters, not marching, chanting heteronormativity-smashers. This didn’t sit well with the activist gay left. (You know the sort I mean: the ones who’ve turned it into a calling).

Few ministers are tested as abruptly as Kate Forbes has been. The SNP’s junior finance minister was promoted to the Scottish cabinet ten days ago and three weeks after Derek Mackay’s resignation forced her to deliver the budget with hours’ notice. Nicola Sturgeon’s minority government can typically rely on the dutiful support of the nationalist Scottish Greens but, come budget time, the finance secretary has to crack out the national credit card and buy the swampies off. Given the circumstances of Mackay’s departure and Forbes’ sudden elevation aged just 29, the Scottish government was more vulnerable than ever. Green leader Patrick Harvie could have produced a wish list and come away with his biggest ever budget haul.

How do you save a party that doesn’t want to be saved? Tony Blair doesn’t know but it hasn’t stop him trying. He is now warning Labour against retreating into a safe space of identity politics and angry, hectoring progressivism. Specifically, he has in mind the transgender movement and its astonishingly swift march through the institutions, including the Labour party. Blair cautioned: ‘You have got to distinguish between the advocacy of things that are right — gay rights, transgender rights, whatever it is — and launching yourself politically into a culture war with the right. If you go, “Transgender rights is our big thing,” and the right goes, “Immigration controls is our big thing,” you’re going to lose that.

Nicola Sturgeon has told Andrew Marr: ‘I do intend to lead my party into the next Scottish Parliament election and hopefully win that and stay as First Minister.’ What’s this all about, then? Didn’t she just record a stonking General Election victory north of the border? Yes, she did. Isn’t polling support for the SNP at levels that would impress even Kim Jong-un? Not quite, but not far off. The SNP leader finds herself in an unusual position. Electorally, she is her party’s most successful leader – winning three Westminster elections in a row and a third term in office at Holyrood. But Scottish Nationalists didn’t become Scottish Nationalists to win Westminster elections; they yearn to break free from the clutches of colonial tyranny.

Living in Scotland, it’s depressing to hear the way UK Government ministers talk about immigration. I have one proposal in front of me right now that advocates ‘a points-based approach’ as part of ‘a controlled immigration system to meet our own economic, social and demographic priorities and needs’. Anyone who wishes to ‘work, study or live’ here ‘will have to meet a set of reasonable and fair requirements to gain entry or approval to remain’. Predictably, for all the usual talk about attracting ‘skilled individuals from overseas’, there is the familiar obsession with numbers, especially of non-Europeans: ‘If there are higher than required numbers of non-European Economic Area/Swiss migrants...

The SNP’s ability to defy political gravity — a poll conducted last month put them on 51 per cent in Holyrood voting intentions — is easier to understand when you consider the alternatives. Jackson Carlaw, unveiled on Friday as Ruth Davidson’s successor at the helm of the Scottish Tories, is a pleasant chap with a certain flair but unlikely to bring the House of Sturgeon to its knees. Scottish Labour is led by Richard Leonard, a man so anonymous there are members of the witness protection programme with better name recognition. Scots go to the polls next May for the Scottish Parliament election and the choice is between the least effective government of the devolution era and an opposition most voters aren’t aware exists.

I knew if we waited long enough, the United Nations would make itself useful. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has produced a handy catalogue of companies that supporters of Israel can give their business to. Of course, this was not Michelle Bachelet’s intention. Bachelet is the commissioner and before that she was an exquisitely unpopular Chilean politician and head of UN Women, the all-girl Ghostbusters of UN agencies that fights global mistreatment of women by putting out hashtags and putting Saudi Arabia on its executive board. Now Bachelet has released ‘a database of all business enterprises involved in certain specified activities related to the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’.

Has Boris Johnson made the first major error of his premiership? Choosing his adviser over his Chancellor could be seen as a bold gamble of the sort that won him a sweeping election victory and got the UK out of the European Union. We of little faith in the commentariat have often misread this prime minister and have been left looking like chumps as a result. But where Boris has succeeded is in defying the rules of politics and the circumstances of Sajid Javid’s departure have more to do with the rules of governance. Robert Peston says: ‘The PM and [Dominic] Cummings believe the success of the government in these challenging times require Downing Street and the Treasury to act, as far as possible, as one seamless unit.

If Labour had chosen Liz Kendall instead of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, she’d be prime minister by now. She was young. She had ideas. Inevitably, she got 4.5 per cent of the vote. It is therefore my solemn duty to inform Lisa Nandy that I consider her the best candidate for Labour leader. On balance, she seems to have the surest chance of saving the party. Not, of course, that Labour deserves to be saved. But it is in the country’s interest that the party that emerges over the next few years is the least extreme and least anti-Semitic one possible. Like anyone of good sense, I endeavoured to avoid this leadership election entirely, but then I started reading Nandy’s speeches and got hooked. ‘For decades...

‘You want the dowry, but you don't like the bride’ is how Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol summed up his colleagues’ wish to keep Judea and Samaria but not the Arabs living there. I feel much the same about right-wingers losing their shizzle over a report in the Sunday Telegraph about new taxes being mulled by Downing Street. Christopher Hope has two sources who say the Prime Minister and Chancellor are contemplating a ‘mansion tax’ (either in the form of an annual wealth tax or a higher council tax band) and cutting pension tax relief on those earning over £50,000 from 40 per cent to 20 per cent. ‘Had we wanted Labour, we'd have voted for Corbyn,’ huffed the Bruges Group.