Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic! The UK should hold its nerve

DESPITE her looming showdown with Alex Salmond, British politicians are still scared stiff of Nicola Sturgeon and her threat of Indyref2. Only Boris has the measure of her. As far as he is concerned any ...

Will Sturgeon’s totalitarian waltz speed up in 2021?

THE NICOLA STURGEON of 2021 is no Adolf Hitler. But she is in the vanguard of an attempt to weaken and discredit democracy that is being rolled out across the world.  Democracy has arguably never been ...

No-Deal Nicola: does the SNP really care about EU membership?

THE PLACE of the EU in SNP policy has been anything but consistent. Yet to listen to Nicola Sturgeon and her adjutants, we might be forgiven for thinking that the SNP has been consistently pro-EU ...

ThinkBooks: The Maias, by Eça de Queiroz

THE PORTUGUESE writer José Maria Eça de Queiroz (1845-1900) created a series of novels portraying Portugal as a society in decay. Family dramas involving infidelity, deception and tragedy  are at the centre of them.  He was well-placed ...

Without proper scrutiny of this deal our democracy is at stake

IF YOU WERE TO EXAMINE the pillars of our democracy and had to choose one that was the foundation on which all else rested, what would it be? My vote would go to the process ...

ThinkBooks: Histories of the Habsburgs, Germany & the causes of WWI

FOR THOSE who don’t read German the last few years have seen the publication of at least three real page-turners on the history of Central Europe. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Not only are ...

Scotland’s drug death shame is due to Nicola Sturgeon’s wrong priorities

THE GRAPH BELOW of drug deaths in Scotland is so bad it looks like fake news.

But this is real.  

As a GP I have had patients come ...

The Nazis and Scotland – little evidence that divide and conquer could undermine Britain

IN THE COURSE of revising the history of Scotland in my recent series of articles (full list of fourteen chapters at foot here), I noted how several leading Scottish Nationalists during the Second ...

Scottish nationalism and German nationalism – are they more alike than we are ready to accept?

EVEN IN THIS AGE of unpredictable politics, when Boris Johnson embraces Green causes with a fervour perhaps not seen anywhere in Europe since Germany under Hitler, offering comparisons between contemporary politics and the era ...

Brexit and the drive for a second independence referendum

GLOBAL HISTORIANS ARE very interested in what they call ‘The European Miracle’, the title of a famous book, which has gone through several editions, by Professor E.L. Jones. The miracle referred to is not the ...

Now is the time to strengthen our British solidarity – not abandon it

THERE COULD NOT be a worse time to break up Britain, yet listening to Nicola Sturgeon you would think it was the great panacea for Scotland. Britain will be paying for Coronavirus for a long ...

What’s the real story of Covid-19 in Scotland?

WE ARE LIVING in extraordinary times. Whatever your view of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting mitigation strategies undertaken by governments worldwide, there has never been a time when governments had such wide-ranging control over ...