No confidence expectations and the numbers game – why 158 is not magic at all

AT LEAST 48 letters calling for a vote of confidence in Theresa May as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party have been received by Sir Graham Brady, the Chairman of the parliamentary party’s 1922 ...

On Brexit - as with everything else, governing is choosing

IN THE EARLY 1950s the French Prime Minister, Pierre Mendes-France, was slightly more than a spear-carrier in the tragi-comedy of the Fourth Republic, with one lasting legacy. On 3 June 1953, he spoke to the ...

More Holyrood posturing, but no positive alternatives for Brexit

WHATEVER VIEW one takes of the Prime Minister’s agreed deal with the EU27 on Brexit, it is at least a substantial proposal which aims to deliver on the result of the EU Referendum, whilst maintaining ...

As May digs her heels in new polling demonstrates the huge unpopularity of her Withdrawal Agreement

NEW POLLING on the Withdrawal Agreement commissioned by Global Britain contains no good news for the Prime Minister. Not even a scintilla of Christmas cheer.

The headline result is that more people support ...

Meeting the power surge is not for feint hearts (nor wind turbines)

NEW YORK, in the words of the popular song, is the city that never sleeps - life there continues around the clock.  To some extent, in 2018, London, Manchester, Glasgow and other large UK cities might ...

It is not enough to thank our emergency workers, we must protect them

I SPENT THE EVENING of November 5th in the Dundee fire control room, watching as the calls came flooding in.

As we know now, firefighters across Scotland dealt with more than 330 ...

Why I cannot support the PM's divisive plan

IN THE 2014 Scottish Independence referendum I campaigned head, heart, body and soul to keep our United Kingdom together and to stop the SNP from breaking it up. Since my election to the House of ...

Democracy equals prosperity for Scotland - but who's listening?

I AM OLD ENOUGH and indeed fortunate enough to have had the sort of education that seems, alas, to have fallen by the wayside for political reasons.  By the end of my early years at ...

Wind power ain't all that's claimed for it

EVERY SO OFTEN there is a story in Scotland’s media that hails the great advances being made by technology designed to be environmentally friendlier and help us reverse climate change. That’s fair enough, but what ...

Tidal power ain't all that's claimed for it

IT IS DEPRESSING how the media routinely publish press releases from renewable energy developers and lobby groups as if they were scientific fact rather than exercises in public relations. An example of this appeared in ...

Hammond's neo-Keynesian budget threatens us all

A NUMBER of commentators have pointed to the oddity that Conservative Chancellor Philip Hammond appears to have succumbed to a worldview in which Her Majesty’s Government is the owner of all our money, and it ...

Brexit: the UK should not sign its freedom away

FOR TWO years Fishing for Leave has warned UK ministries and ministers that whatever Theresa May signs us up to will be treated as an international treaty. Under the Vienna Convention governing international treaties, and ...