Monthly Archives: June 2015

The grammar of 21st century terrorism is depressingly familiar by now. First comes the outrage: Innocents savagely cut down going about their lives. Then the reaction, as politicians emote, 24-hour news speculates, and viewers gasp at the brazen, bloody theatrics. We move quickly onto the clichés. “They hate us for our freedom.” “Terrorism is causedContinue reading “Tunisia shows there is no opting out of struggle against Islamism”

I am writing this from a coffee shop in Edinburgh. Half the people in the room are tapping away on laptops, smartphones or tablets. Who knows what they’re doing. Some might be emailing clients. Others will be checking Facebook. At least one might be updating a Tumblr dedicated exclusively to Photoshops of Jim Murphy asContinue reading “The speech Nicola Sturgeon could give to put an end to cybernats”

Never speak ill of the dead, our mothers instructed us, and I suppose that taboo extends to the dying. But those shuffling off this mortal coil are encumbered by no such niceties. Indeed, they can be vicious, lashing out frantically at everyone else, dreading the looming inevitable. Scottish Labour is raging against the dying ofContinue reading “Watching Scottish Labour fade away made for awkward viewing”

World War II didn’t actually end in 1945, you might be surprised to learn. Japan’s aggression against the Allied Forces in fact ceased on March 11, 1974. Or at least it did for Hiroo Onoda, a second lieutenant in the Imperial Army, who finally surrendered on that day. Onoda spent 29 years cut off fromContinue reading “Labour is the Hiroo Onoda of Scottish politics”

Every pundit in Scotland knows what ails the Labour Party and the prescription for its malaise. We’ve written many columns and monopolised hours of airtime telling you so. On Saturday, Jim Murphy took his turn to lay out a framework for reforming Scottish Labour and electing a new leader and deputy leader. He did soContinue reading “Jim Murphy hands Scottish Labour a chance to rebuild”

Half the country thinks it’s a cult, the other half is chugging down the Kool-Aid. The SNP is a political and cultural phenomenon sweeping away the old certainties of British politics, enthusing and enraging in equal measure as it goes along. As things stand, the Nationalists are the majority government at Holyrood, the third partyContinue reading “What is Scottish nationalism, what is it not, what could it be?”

John Swinney was one of the best leaders of the SNP in decades. Nothing will dissuade me from this view. Not the party’s mediocre electoral performance during his tenure (down one MP and eight MSPs). Not his failure to unite the gradualist and fundamentalist wings. Not even his role in the departure from the partyContinue reading “Swinney comes out swinging in stand-in FMQs joust”