Stephen Daisley

As the independent bar in Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates is by necessity a reserved and disinterested body. It does not issue letters like the one that has gone out this morning to Karen Adam, the convenor of Holyrood’s equalities, human rights and civil justice committee. The correspondence takes issue, in blistering terms, with the

The plight of Russell Findlay reveals a lot about how politics works. Findlay was elected leader of the Scottish Conservatives in September 2024, by which point the party’s vulnerability to Reform was already clear. The Holyrood Tories were not made for a populist era. They are a patrician party of the cosy centre, chiefly concerned

The Supreme Court ruling on the definition of ‘woman’ in the Equality Act is a victory for women, proper statutory interpretation and the reality-based community. It started with the Scottish government trying to take something away from women. The Gender Representation on Public Boards Act, passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2018, required 50 per

If there has been one constant in Hashem Abedi’s miserable life it has been the determined failure of the British state to protect its citizens from men like him. Abedi is accused of inflicting ‘life-threatening injuries’ on three prison officers in an attack at HMP Frankland on Saturday. Injuries are said to include ‘burns, scalds and stab

This week on Britain: The Decline Years, a firm of London solicitors has announced it is acting on behalf of Hamas in a legal challenge to the Islamist group’s inclusion on the UK government terror list. The paramilitary wing has been proscribed since 2001 and the political wing since 2021. It took the British political class

With the imperial pomposity of an old colonial governor, David Lammy has ‘made clear’ to the Israelis that denying entry to Labour MPs Abtisam Mohamed and Yuan Yang is ‘no way to treat British Parliamentarians’. Bloody natives, getting ideas above their station again. Any more of this nonsense, chaps, and you’ll be summoned to High Commissioner Lammy’s office for a jolly

Robert Jenrick’s victory over the Sentencing Council — James Heale is correct to call it that — is, more importantly, a victory for the new style of Toryism the shadow justice secretary is beginning to articulate. There’s no dressing it up: what the Sentencing Council proposed was the introduction of race-based differential treatment to England’s

A parliament is an odd place. It’s the arena where clashing worldviews come to cross swords and there’s low and ugly skullduggery. In most other workplaces, political differences are a topic to be avoided, but the job of a parliamentarian is to spend day after day with colleagues whose values they abhor and whose ideas

Kenny MacAskill has won the leadership of Alba and just to underscore how cursed that position is, he defeated his rival Ash Regan by 52 per cent to 48 per cent. Alba is the party founded by Alex Salmond following an exit from the SNP that wasn’t entirely amicable. (You might have read about it.)

Southside Central is the kind of ward Scottish Labour needs to be winning. It’s in Glasgow, home to significant pockets of deprivation within the Gorbals and Govanhill, and has a substantial population of Scots of Pakistani heritage. If there is a path to a Labour government after the 2026 Holyrood elections, it runs through communities

Here’s a political conundrum for you. You’re the SNP. You’ve been in power in Scotland since 2007. You’re 13 points ahead in the polls one year out from the next Holyrood election. You’ve been stumbling these past few years but you’ve finally found your feet again. Your leader is less divisive than his predecessors and

As Nicola Sturgeon announces that she is standing down from the Scottish parliament, it is worth reflecting on what a gilded political life she led – and how she managed to fritter it all away and leave frontline politics with no legacy, or at least none she’d care to be remembered by. The former Glasgow

‘There are judges in Jerusalem,’ Menachem Begin is reputed to have proclaimed, following a court ruling which he believed vindicated one of his policy positions.  The phrase has been appropriated by critics of judicial reform and others keen to see Bagatz, the Israeli supreme court, remain a bulwark against illiberal overreach by the government. ‘There are judges

The Trump-Zelensky summit is a geopolitical Rashomon. Some saw a lying, maniacal bully and his snarling sidekick berate a patriot for telling the truth about his nation’s attacker and refusing to surrender to him. Others witnessed a bratty ingrate haughtily shaking his begging bowl while dictating to his benefactors the terms on which he would

Every time the Palestinians rebuff a peace proposal, commentators reach for an observation by the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban: ‘The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.’ It’s pithy, and depressingly accurate, but I’ve always been more struck by another Eban aphorism: ‘Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other