BY EFFIE DEANS The defeat of the SNP has given the Scottish Conservative Party an opportunity, but it seems determined not to take it. For at least the next 5 years and probably for much longer there will be no point debating what Scotland’s national anthem will be after independence. The constitutional issue that has dominated Scottish politics since 2011 will be a non-issue. So, … Continue reading Tories Still Missing the Point
BY EFFIE DEANS It is not accidental that David Davis used parliamentary privilege to name Nicola Sturgeon’s former chief of staff Liz Lloyd as the source of the leak to the Daily Record about allegations against Alex Salmond. It is not accidental that he used parliamentary privilege, so the rest of us who are not in parliament must be careful. It is also not accidental … Continue reading The Hinge on which Scottish History Turns
BY EFFIE DEANS If the price that we needed to pay for the SNP to be reduced to a handful of MPs was a Labour government with a large majority, it was a price worth paying. I am more optimistic than some people about Labour, but whatever Labour does and however long it rules, it will be temporary. What the SNP was trying to do … Continue reading Rub SNP Noses in Defeat
BY EFFIE DEANS Scotland for the past decade has been dominated by the SNP. It would oddly I think benefit the SNP if it were decisively defeated at the election, because then it would have to address its failure of the past decade. If the SNP wins a few seats less than Labour, it will continue as before. If it by some mischance wins one … Continue reading If We Don’t Defeat The SNP This Time We Will Deserve What Follows
BY EFFIE DEANS The result of the election promises to be both strange and familiar, because it has already happened here and recently. The solution to the democratic problem will be the same because it has already happened here and still more recently. In 2015 the SNP won all but three of the seats in the General Election in Scotland and this dominance has continued … Continue reading Two Party Politics is Dead
BY EFFIE DEANS I’m a Pro UK Scot whose main concern is defeating the SNP. Scottish politics has been about independence alone since at least 2011. This has not only been divisive it has meant that all of the political parties and especially the SNP have ignored other issues. This has damaged Scotland hugely and made it a poorer place to live, which is a … Continue reading Scots’ Task is to Defeat the SNP
BY HAMISH GOBSON Now that Humble Humza’s world has ended, and Alister Jack has put himself out to pastures new, Scottish politics is heading in a new direction. Since no-one takes Holyrood seriously anymore, the future is green – by which I mean the field of legitimate conflict about the way forward for this country has moved to the green benches of the House of … Continue reading Life in the Highlands, Then and Then
BY EFFIE DEANS The significance of the General Election in Scotland is that it might finally after more than a decade give us the chance to move on from debating independence. We have had single issue politics since at least 2011. People have voted not on the basis of party policies or competence but on what stance the party took on independence. Voters continued to … Continue reading Punish Them
BY EFFIE DEANS There is of course nothing offensive in describing Scottish nationalism as a threat to the UK. Indeed, the UK has never come closer to destruction than in September 2014. If Germany had succeeded in invading the UK in 1940 the UK would still most likely have continued to exist just as France did, but if the SNP ever won a vote on … Continue reading The SNP is No Threat to Anyone
BY EFFIE DEANS Scotland is returning to its Labour roots which gives the SNP a choice. Either it goes further left than Labour which means it might as well merge with the Scottish Greens, or it goes to the Centre Right. It has chosen the latter. For historical reasons there is both a geographical and a numerical limit to the support that the Scottish Conservatives … Continue reading Back to the Tartan Tories
BY EFFIE DEANS The greatest fault of British politics since the Second World War is that it manages decline. Apart from a brief decade when Margaret Thatcher changed direction, we merely increase our debts, lower our productivity, and see our living standards become more mediocre. Swinney will manage the decline of the SNP. Swinney is like one of the old Bolsheviks. He was there in … Continue reading No Rival, No Leader
BY EFFIE DEANS In writing about the end of the Bute House agreement I had assumed that the independence movement remained rational and would act with the aim of furthering that goal rather than destroying it. I had also assumed that Humza Yousaf had consulted with his Scottish Greens colleagues and had planned for all eventualities. That too has proven to be a false assumption. … Continue reading The Independence Movement is Committing Suicide
BY EFFIE DEANS The roots of recent events go far back. The SNP changed when it first gained power in 2007 and even more when it gained a majority in 2011. But it changed most during the long independence referendum campaign that started when David Cameron agreed that there was going to be a referendum and built momentum until it reached a sort of frenzy … Continue reading And Lead us not into Temptation but Deliver us from Nationalism
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP should be charged with wasting police time I have very limited experience with the Scottish police, which is as it should be in a free society. They are invariably pleasant, polite and helpful. The police don’t stop you for no reason. They don’t come round your house or place of work without cause. If you are a law-abiding citizen, you … Continue reading Scottish National Police Timewasters
BY HAMISH GOBSON Given that Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act came into force on April Fools’ Day, I thought it might help to put it in context by remembering Scotland’s fascist past. That story has been well told by a St Andrews academic, Gavin Bowd, in an important book called FASCIST SCOTLAND: Caledonia and the Far Right (2014). Anyone who wants to understand the nationalist connection with … Continue reading April Haters Day Has Fascist Past
BY HAMISH GOBSON The piece planned for today had to be postponed after I made an extraordinary discovery which all literate people in Scotland (or anywhere else for that matter) ought to be warned about urgently. I bought a book from Amazon which turns out to have been written using “Artificial Intelligence technology”. Here is what happened. For reasons connected with the open racism at the … Continue reading Is Humza Yousaf Spouting Artificial Intelligence?
BY EFFIE DEANS Scottish politics is still primarily motivated by hatred of Tories. For this reason, at the next election 30% of Scots will vote for left-wing SNP, 35% will vote for left-wing Labour, 5-10 percent will vote for left-wing Lib Dems, 15-20% will vote for left-wing Scottish Conservatives and the rest will stay at home. But a year ago the SNP nearly voted for … Continue reading A Tory Rebrand in Scotland?
BY HAMISH GOBSON Values are eternal, despite the efforts of FDR, Nixon and the likes of Yousaf It is becoming increasingly obvious why the current Scottish government wants to undermine the independence of the judiciary. They are terrified of what a genuinely free court system would do to them if the police would only present their allegations against the several delinquent leaders in a timely … Continue reading Values are Eternal
BY EFFIE DEANS The problem with Scottish nationalism is that it would do nothing to address the fundamental problems Scotland faces, but instead would have added some new ones that we didn’t face before. Scotland is a wonderful place to live. We are sparsely populated which means that countryside is always nearby and largely empty. The Highlands are as beautiful a part of the world … Continue reading Why Does No-one Want to Come to Scotland?
BY HAMISH GOBSON Why Sturgeon’s clannish conceit is a challenge to democracy Many of those who watched a bit of Nicola Sturgeon and Alister Jack in the Covid show of late will have been struck, as I was, by how accurate Ian Mitchell’s analysis of nationalistic Scottish politics was in the two books he has written on the subject (see foot of this article). His essential … Continue reading Clannish Conceit
