Author Archives: stephenjdaisley

Theresa May is expected to announce her resignation as Prime Minister sometime in June. Given her success rate on exit plans, she could still be in Downing Street three years from now, preparing to enter the latest round of negotiations with the removal men. However, assuming she manages an orderly Therexit, we can look forward […]

She heads a minority government with few achievements and leads a factional party frustrated by her failure to deliver their number one policy. She lost the governing majority she inherited and a raft of MPs after a lacklustre General Election campaign. No doubt she believes, like Margaret Thatcher before her, that she can ‘go on […]

When I read last week that Allan Massie had defected from Labour to the Tories, I was baffled. Scotland’s greatest living writer is no leftist; his fiery philippics against socialism once exploded from the pages of the Daily Mail. After retrieving my glasses, I was relieved to learn I had squinted an extra ‘L’. It […]

Ruth Davidson is back, but is she ready for what lies ahead? On this question, the next two years of Scottish politics will hang. Davidson presented herself to the Tory conference in Aberdeen as a candidate to be the next First Minister. Now she must convince the voters and that isn’t going to be easy. […]

The Tories gathered yesterday in an Aberdeen battered by rain and hail, then Ruth Davidson bounded on stage and brought the sunshine. There was a spring in her step and she radiated the happy-tired glow of the new parent. And that smile — the grin that can light up a thousand cybernat accounts — flashed […]

There’s a kind of hush all over Tory conference. Bridge of Don is hardly the Vegas Strip but it is even more subdued this weekend for the presence of the Scottish Conservatives. Delegates — 500 or so by my count — milled around with all the joy of an IKEA husband on a Saturday afternoon. […]

‘It would be indiscriminate and devastating and would bring unspeakable human suffering and widespread and lasting environmental damage,’ Nicola Sturgeon intoned gravely. Other than that, she was all for Pete Wishart becoming Speaker. In fact, the First Minister was talking about a potential nuclear war, though given the choice I reckon she’d have to think […]

It’s been five days since I learned that my country wasn’t normal. It had never occurred to me there was anything strange or deficient about us, save for the national football team and the relentless career of Elaine C Smith. Then, last Wednesday, I sat in the press gallery of the Scottish Parliament for the […]

‘Independent’ was the 27th word of Nicola Sturgeon’s conference speech and, in essence, the other 4,579 words too. Addressing a bulging crowd at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, she trilled that Auld Reekie was ‘soon to be, we hope — and how good does this sound? — the capital city of an independent Scotland’. So, […]

The best way to follow First Minister’s Questions, if you really must, is the Marra method. Simply tune out the dull maundering from the frontbenches and those behind until all you can hear is Jenny Marra. The Labour MSP provides a rollicking running commentary to every excuse, fabulism and self-justification. The BBC should offer it […]