Category Archives: Daily Mail

Politician of the Year is a concept to be viewed with the utmost suspicion. It’s like Top Ten Estate Agents or World’s Greatest Traffic Warden. Surely giving them an award only encourages them. Ruth Davidson has picked up the gong for the second year in a row, a reflection of the remarkable gains made byContinueContinue reading “Ruth is headed for the top. Lazy Tory passengers should alight immediately.”

To Holyrood for First Minister’s Questions, where there is a distinct lack of a First Minister. In her place sits John Swinney. Zimbabweans have ousted Robert Mugabe after a long, colourful tyranny. Could a military coup have claimed our own snazzily-dressed megalomaniac? Nicola Sturgeon would be blissfully unaware if there were tanks in the streetsContinueContinue reading “Holyrood sketch: No more Mr Nice Guy… The return of Angry John”

They can’t hide it anymore. The contempt in which the political class holds the rest of us has erupted from the confines of the bubble and oozed its way across the entire body politic. The worst politicians no longer pretend they respect us or seek our approval. Ego is all and the best interests ofContinueContinue reading “How bounders, chancers and charlatans took over politics”

The Sturgeometer, the most reliable scale of outrage in Scottish politics, was pealing full pitch.  A growing part of the First Minister’s job involves condemning things that are already deplored and don’t require her opprobrium but which she must be seen to be against all the same. So she summons all her lamentations and informsContinueContinue reading “Tax talk sends the Sturgeometer into overdrive”

Amid the weary laments that politics in the age of Trump and Brexit has become too interesting, it is reassuring to know that torpor still has a place. Scottish Labour is doing its all to prove it with a seemingly interminable leadership contest of studied banality. Following unexpected gains in the General Election and aContinueContinue reading “If the fight to lead Labour took place in my garden – I’d draw the curtains”

Whenever a politician calls for consensus, hide your wallet. Nothing good ever comes of the words ‘cross-party cooperation’. Working together is the surest sign they’re up to no good because, for all their grudges and enmities, the one thing they agree on is that more of your money should be in their hands. Nicola SturgeonContinueContinue reading “Whenever politicians call for consensus, hide your cash”

Like those gap yah Tristrams who backpack from one war zone to the next, bagging a few selfies with traumatised locals along the way, Scottish Nationalists have arrived at their latest destination. The rest of the world looks at the Spanish constitutional crisis with a mixture of bafflement and boredom. Is Europe hellbent on tearingContinueContinue reading “Nicola’s ‘freedom fighters’ take up arms (and enjoy a few days in the sun!)”

Willie Rennie is a Lib Dem for people who otherwise view Lib Dems with suspicion. He spurns sandals in favour of sensible brogues and does not have the look of a man who carries an emergency supply of lentils on his person at all times. I doubt a spoonful of muesli has ever passed hisContinueContinue reading “The First Minister is like Judith Chalmers in reverse”

Trigger warning. This column contains ideas you may disagree with and pursues arguments that could cause distress to your existing worldview. Those of a sensitive disposition are advised to find a safe space.  Such advisories are becoming commonplace, another layer of cotton wool for a civilisation insulating itself to the point of suffocation. Last weekContinueContinue reading “They may lean to the Left but today’s millennials are the real reactionaries”