Unionism is dead – long live Unity

SLOWLY the Scottish commentariat is beginning to acknowledge the grassroots movement Alliance for Unity as a force to be reckoned with at the coming Holyrood election. We have come a long way in a few ...

Scotland under the Conservatives, 1979-1997 – Part two.

THE FIRST PART of this section concentrated on Britain’s relative economic decline in the 1960s and 1970s. Thatcher was well aware of the country’s reputation and on 13 May 1975 told the Scottish Tory conference: “It is to ...

The hypocritical paradoxes of the SNP

MANY PEOPLE THINK the SNP believes in Scottish independence and is against unionism – and yet the nationalist’s utopia is a paradox. Why, in what way? 

Look no further than the SNP ...

The greatest risk we face is risk aversion itself

THE VAST MAJORITY of us presume British democracy is stable and everlasting. In fact it is in a continuous state of evolution as it reacts to events. There are institutions charged with its protection but ...

Scotland under the Conservatives, 1979-1997 – Part one

MRS THATCHER is a much hated figure in Scotland even today. A retrospective assessment of her premiership in The National on 26 June 2018, for example, was headed ‘This is the truth about how Thatcher devastated ...

Viva Moi: The hour of knaves and narcissists is killing Scotland

PEOPLE WHO CANNOT conceal the fact that their primary interest is in themselves rarely make good leaders. Politicians who take extraordinary care with their grooming and place much store on their other personal needs, rarely ...

To lockdown or not to lockdown in Scotland? That is the question

WILL SHE or won’t she? Only a few days ago, Nicola Sturgeon announced her Byzantine system of localised and graduated lockdown levels, attempting to better the Prime Minister’s tiers by renaming them, increasing the number, making them more localised, and introducing a harsher option. Yet Boris, for ...

The rise of the SNP

FROM 1945 to 1964 the Scottish National Party represented no credible threat to the Union. In the 1945 general election it received only 1.27 per cent of the Scottish vote while seven out of its ...

We must abandon fear – it’s time for Recovery

WE’VE ALL HAD to watch a lot of grim TV lately. I’d like to invite you to watch a different channel. 

On the one side, there’s Matt Hancock & the Lockdowners – ...

In praise of the United Kingdom

IN 2017, the British Council conducted a survey among young people across the G20 nations called From the Outside In, which considered how the UK is viewed abroad. It found that the UK ranked fourth equal ...

Scotland and the Second World War

THE MYTH that Britain languished in a deep economic depression in the 1930s – the Slump in other words –  was dispelled in a previous article. It was, in fact, an economically strong Britain that entered ...

Devolution needs reset – returning it to its original limited purpose

ANOTHER WEEK has passed where many of the headlines have revealed the cruelty and absurdity of the world. A teacher in Paris, Samuel Paty, is brutally slain by a Chechen refugee after an imam has ...