Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
After coasting his way to No. 10, Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership has got off to a pretty cursed start. Some of this wasn’t his fault, such as the Southport riots, and some has come from enacting policies that, while controversial, represent rational political choices, such as means-testing the winter fuel payment and early release of
The question of whether to scrap winter fuel payments to all but the poorest retirees is a very British debate, in that it’s any sort of debate at all. Rachel Reeves’s reforms are estimated to save £1.3 billion this year and £1.5 billion in subsequent years. That’s not nothing but, for a sense of scale,
The SNP hasn’t wanted for its woes lately but now there is fresh trouble on the way. Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, tells the BBC it is ‘unlikely’ that her party will vote for the next Scottish government budget after the Nationalists unveiled £500 million in cuts aimed at balancing Holyrood’s books. Many
The Scottish Conservative leadership election is now Russell Findlay’s to lose. The West Scotland MSP has secured three big endorsements: former Scottish Secretaries Lord Forsyth and David Mundell, and shadow Scottish Secretary John Lamont. It means all five Scottish Tory MPs support his campaign, alongside 12 MSPs, two council leaders and leading party donors Alasdair
The 1997 Christmas special of The Mrs Merton Show probably doesn’t feature in many people’s formative political memories, but it remains with me more than a quarter-century later. Caroline Aherne, as the bitchy old biddy who made celebrities squirm, turned her smiling-assassin interview style on Edwina Currie, there to flog a book. After introducing her
Something interesting is happening in the Scottish Conservative leadership election, and while I appreciate you might be sceptical about the juxtaposition of ‘interesting’ and ‘Scottish Conservative’, there is a certain dynamic at play. Unlike the race for UK Tory leader, the contest is not between left and right, for there isn’t really a right to
During his time as Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond was accused by the Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont of fostering a ‘something for nothing’ culture with vote-grabbing policies like free university tuition, free prescriptions and a council tax freeze – expensive gimmicks that took cash away from where it was needed most. Lamont’s analysis was
Russell Findlay has launched his bid to be the next Scottish Tory leader as the party descends into a civil war over the propriety of the electoral process. The UK Conservative leadership race has thus far been a pretty staid affair. Not so the Scottish party, which is on the hunt for a new figurehead
Every now and then, I find myself in the strange position of trying to convince Scottish nationalists not to train their pitchforks on SNP MSP John Mason, who is known for his mercurial pronouncements. This time he has been suspended from the party whip for disputing the assertion that Israel is conducting a genocide in
The Scottish nationalists are aggrieved. What’s new, I hear you ask. Well, a diplomatic row, one which has prompted some decidedly undiplomatic language. The Scottish establishment is worked up after it emerged that Angus Robertson, the Scottish government’s pretendy foreign secretary, met with Daniela Grudsky. Who’s she? Why, Israel’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom. Their
Britain’s antisemitism problem continues to grow. A report from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors racist attacks and abuse against British Jews, documents 1,978 incidents in the first six months of 2024. That is the highest figure ever recorded for the first half of any year and a 105 per cent increase
With just 24 hours until nominations open in the Scottish Conservative leadership contest, Murdo Fraser has stuck his hand up. That makes six contenders so far to replace outgoing leader Douglas Ross. Fraser has stood for the post before, in 2011, but lost out to Ruth Davidson. Perhaps the pivotal reason for Fraser’s defeat was
The slaughter of 12 children on an Israeli soccer pitch was awful, of course, but it’s important not to overreact to these things. That is the takeaway from the Majdal Shams attack for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. Via his spokesperson, Guterres condemned the killings but called for ‘maximum restraint’ to avoid ‘any further escalation’ and urged
In dodging calls from his party to remove the two-child cap, Sir Keir Starmer is making one of his first noteworthy mistakes as Prime Minister. Both John McDonnell, the far-left former shadow chancellor, and Anas Sarwar, the soft-left Scottish Labour leader, have called for the Coalition-era policy to go. The cap limits the payment of
Operation Long Arm, the code name for Israel’s counter-terror strikes in Yemen, sends a message almost as forceful as the payload of its F-15s. Iran may have an extensive network of proxies through which to attack Israel but the IDF will go whatever distance necessary to defend itself. In this instance 1,200 miles to Al
Foreign policy will have been low on Donald Trump’s list of considerations when deciding to anoint JD Vance as his running mate. The Ohio senator, a former detractor turned loyalist of the Republican nominee, is now close with Team Trump, and Team Trump rewards loyalty above all else. Vance is also a populist and speaks
Since its launch in Scotland in 2014, the National newspaper has made a name for itself for several reasons, none of them particularly good. It is not merely partisan in the way many British newspapers are, strongly supportive of one party and editorialising thunderously from the front page through to the opinion pages. At the
As the Democrats go into a very public meltdown about Joe Biden’s fitness to be their presidential candidate in November, there is an unusual sound emanating from Donald Trump: silence. In the 2016 campaign and across four years in the White House, Trump proved himself incapable of message discipline, venting against fellow Republicans on social
One of the defining themes of the new government will be devolution. Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner’s plan, according to the Labour manifesto, is to ‘transfer power out of Westminster, and into our communities.’ It’s a signal of the priority they place on these reforms that the Prime Minister and his deputy hosted English regional
Scottish Labour has won 37 of the 57 seats north of the border, an increase of 36 on the 2019 result. This is the party’s best showing in Scotland since 2010 and comes nine years after losing all but one of their seats to the SNP. Labour will be sending its most impressive crop of
