BY EFFIE DEANS In theory Alex Salmond’s new Alba Party is good news for independence supporters. Let’s assume that support for independence is 45%. Well if the SNP wins 45% of the vote in the constituency seats, it will win nearly all of them. But this means that it will win few if any list seats, because the number of constituencies you win is part … Continue reading Alba
BY EFFIE DEANS Nicola Sturgeon thinks that Alex Salmond is a fantasist living in an alternative reality. It was his behaviour towards women that led to his going to court rather than a conspiracy orchestrated by her. She thinks there is no evidence whatsoever that she did anything wrong. It is quite clear that she believes that Salmond is a liar lucky to be acquitted as … Continue reading Resign, Sturgeon
BY EFFIE DEANS The latest developments in the Alex Salmond Scandal remind me of the famous David Low cartoon Rendezvous from 1939. Just like then it is tempting to hope that both sides lose. Just like then it is impossible to trust what either side says. On the one side we have Nicola Sturgeon, her husband Peter Murrell and probably still the majority of SNP … Continue reading SNP V SNP
BY EFFIE DEANS Something odd happened yesterday. No. Let’s leave to one side the peculiarities of opinion polls, the American voting system and matters across the Atlantic that don’t really concern us, no matter how excited we might get about them. The SNP lost a vote in the Scottish Parliament. Opposition parties including the usually loyal Scottish Greens united to defeat the SNP Government 63 to … Continue reading Angry Salmond Haunts the SNP
BY EFFIE DEANS I remember discussions in 2014 about whether Scottish independence would create a border between Scotland and the rest of Britain. Scottish nationalists insisted vehemently that there would be no border and that we wouldn’t notice crossing from Scotland into England just as an Austrian doesn’t notice crossing into Germany. Six years later and we discover what we knew all along. The SNP … Continue reading A Scottish English Border?
BY EFFIE DEANS We all remember the bit in the Great Escape when Gordon Jackson’s character gives himself away by answering “Thank You” to someone from the Gestapo wishing him “Good Luck” in English. But a modern-day Gordon Jackson QC has recently surpassed even this example of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Alex Salmond’s lawyer has disgraced himself, but I very much … Continue reading Salmond’s Great Escape
BY VADIM STELKOV It seems to be the season for blaming Russia for everything. And no doubt, though it may come as a shock to civvy street, there is substance in the losing Democrats’ claims of the US elections being disrupted by Putin’s Russian hackers – and Obama political appointees in US intelligence agencies have confirmed as much. The extent of Russia’s hacking is a … Continue reading The SNP Russian Adventure
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN David Sole’s Scotland’s 1990 Calcutta Cup defeat of the Auld Enemy before a partisan crowd at Murrayfield Park in Edinburgh was agonising for all Englishmen to watch. Since then, there have been skirmishes won (and a few lost) but none hurt the English so much as that gut-buster of a defeat. I was studying A-Level History at the time and struggled to keep up with … Continue reading What is Scottish?
