BY EFFIE DEANS SNP members have a choice between 3 candidates. Kate Forbes, Humza Yousaf and Ash Regan. Enough has been written about Kate Forbes. She is by far the brightest and most dangerous opponent. I hope she loses, therefore. She will. Despite remaining popular with the public, she cannot possibly become First Minister as some SNP MSPs would not vote for her. She is … Continue reading And Then There Were Three
BY STEWART SLATER Beyond “Don’t invade Russia” (in case any Ukrainians are reading this), there are few laws of international relations. So, in a spirit of due modesty and humility, allow me to propose Slater’s Law: any country which borders a far more powerful state will define itself in contrast to its neighbour and project a public image of itself as a nicer version of … Continue reading The Nasty Forbes Inquisition
BY EFFIE DEANS The key to continuing to defeat your opponent is never to underestimate them. This is the main danger for the pro UK side of the argument in Scotland. Sturgeon is gone, but if there were a General Election tomorrow or a Holyrood election the SNP would still win a large majority of the seats. This may change in time, but it will … Continue reading The SNP’s Potentially Fatal Intersection
BY EFFIE DEANS A recent poll suggests that if a General Election were to be held now the Conservatives would slump to third place and the SNP would form the opposition. It would be an odd situation indeed. How could the SNP legitimately oppose Government policy on UK wide issues when its primary goal in life is to leave the UK? More importantly the SNP … Continue reading The SNP is in the Wilderness
BY IAN MITCHELL Who’s to blame for making it possible for rapists to be incarcerated in women’s prisons in Scotland? Those of us who retained the will to live after the media storm over “the rapist”, Isla Bryson, being sent to a women’s prison while still physically equipped for further raping, will want to know what caused the unexpected eruption of anger with the transgender … Continue reading The Bryson Affair
BY EFFIE DEANS The Scottish play in which we are all performing even if our parts are minor can still end one of two ways, either in tragedy or in comedy. But it is becoming clearer that we are approaching the end one way or the other. The heroine is Nicola Sturgeon. She may still be hoping for an ending with a marriage, reconciliation and … Continue reading Sturgeon’s Tragic Flaw
BY EFFIE DEANS When the majority of Scottish voters chose devolution, they did not choose Scottish independence. If there had been a vote for Scottish independence at that time Scottish nationalists would have struggled to get 30%. It was therefore clear to everyone at the time that Holyrood was subordinate to Westminster. Of course there was a lot of nonsense at the time about restoring … Continue reading A Country? A Woman? The SNP Weaponizes Subjectivity
BY IAN MITCHELL Readers wondering in amazement that Nicola Sturgeon has again put forward a measure which she must have known was going to be knocked back by the United Kingdom government need to understand her background and political personality. Her tactics with the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which was vetoed on Monday night by the British government, have caused surprise. To me, as … Continue reading Gender Recognition Stooshie
BY JAMIE FOSTER Surprisingly, this is only the second biography of Nicola Sturgeon ever published. The last one came out in 2015, and so has been overtaken by events. More importantly, this book is founded almost exclusively on what the First Minister said in parliament. It is not a collection of media stories, nor a bloodless academic “assessment”. It is the unarguable truth of what … Continue reading A New Book about Nicola Sturgeon
BY EFFIE DEANS It is no surprise that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Scottish Parliament cannot hold even an advisory referendum on independence without permission. If it could have done so now, why didn’t it do so in 2014 or at any time previously. The mandate for setting up the Scottish Parliament in the first place was based on there being devolved and … Continue reading What Part of No Don’t You Understand?
BY EFFIE DEANS Since 2016 the SNP has consistently hoped that Brexit would make it easier for Sturgeon to argue for Scottish independence. Scottish opinion was in favour of remaining in the EU, so disappointed Remainers would support the SNP’s argument that the only way to have EU membership would be to leave the UK and join the EU. Many Pro UK Remainers argued and … Continue reading An Independent Scotland Would Never Join the EU
BY EFFIE DEANS With the bridge over the Kerch Straight having just been blown up and Russia threatening “judgement day”, it is hard to believe that the SNP is still considering an unofficial independence referendum in a little more than a year. I know let’s abolish the British Armed Forces and leave its nuclear deterrent homeless just when Mr Putin is threatening us with nuclear … Continue reading What Sturgeon Didn’t Tell You About Currency
BY MARGARET ASHWORTH Early in the morning of August 29, 1930, 92 years ago yesterday, a way of life came to an end after at least 2,000 years. The last 36 residents of St Kilda, an isolated group of granite islands 100 miles off the west coast of Scotland sometimes called ‘the edge of the world’, were evacuated to the mainland at their own request … Continue reading Farewell to the Edge of the World
BY EFFIE DEANS There is in Scotland an unreasoning, visceral hatred of Tories. It reached its present level of vehemence in the 1980s when Scots from the Left and Centre united to prevent the Conservative Party winning even a single seat at the General Election of 1997 and only one until 2015. Tories in Scotland are portrayed not merely as being mistaken, but as morally … Continue reading Are Tories Scum?
BY EFFIE DEANS The United Kingdom has various serious problems at the moment. Some of them are short term primarily caused by our response to Covid, others are more long term. Many of us will struggle to heat our homes or drive our cars, because of long term failures in our energy policy. But the greatest threat to the UK and the greatest long-term problem … Continue reading The ‘Devolved’ & ‘Reserved’ Admonishment
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP’s latest paper “Renewing Democracy through Independence” attempts to show that there is a democratic deficit that justifies Scotland leaving the UK. The argument goes that Scotland votes differently to the UK as a whole in General Elections or during the Brexit referendum. We get Tories though we voted for the SNP or Labour. We get Leave though we voted for … Continue reading Democratic Deficit in Scotland?
BY EFFIE DEANS I don’t know whether the SNP thinks Scotland is a colony, but certainly many if not most independence supporters think this. They often point to a list of countries that have gained independence from the UK and argue that none of them have ever wanted to go back. Most of these countries used to be part of the British Empire. The implication is that … Continue reading If Scotland is a Colony, Who are the Colonisers?
BY EFFIE DEANS Sturgeon plans to hold an independence referendum next October, but she hasn’t published a bill. Yet somehow this unpublished bill is going to the Supreme Court to determine if it is legal or not. If it is legal, we will have an unofficial non-binding referendum with the same question as in 2014. If it is not legal, she plans to turn the … Continue reading The SNP Cannot Use A General Election To Leave The UK
BY EFFIE DEANS The SNP apparently wants “independence in the modern world” as opposed to independence in the ancient world or indeed in the world of the distant future. It wants Scotland to be wealthier, happier and fairer, but these would be changed little by independence. My wealth depends on the job that I do, what I inherit or my luck in winning a lottery. … Continue reading The Burden of Independence
BY EFFIE DEANS Nicola Sturgeon thinks that If Scots could have predicted what would happen after 2014, we would have voted for independence. In that case we would indeed have been wealthier, happier and fairer, but not for the reason she thinks. We could have bought Bitcoin when each one cost less than a pound. We could have predicted the winner of the Derby and … Continue reading O Brave New Scotland
