When attempting to secede from a state, as the Scottish independence movement seeks to do, or to defeat a secessionist movement, as the UK’s governing political parties seek to do, it is natural to look abroad to similar movements and similar states to learn lessons from them.
To govern is to choose, and Mr Swinney will have to choose carefully to maintain party unity long enough for his strategy to pay off. But unlike his predecessor, Mr Swinney at least has a strategy, and his Cabinet reshuffle was the first big indicator of what that strategy is.
We have been able to navigate the opening of this sensitive, nuanced discussion around assisted dying with the dignity, intelligence, and open-mindedness that it deserves.
At their National Campaign Council over the weekend, the SNP leadership laid out their messaging focus for the coming general election.
In the months after the 2014 independence referendum, despite having lost by a double-digit margin and despite the resignation of the totemic Alex Salmond, the mood music in Scottish politics made it feel like the independence movement and the SNP had won. Or at least, like the SNP had.
When Scottish Labour politicians and activists gathered at their annual conference a year ago, it was with a newfound optimism, despite doing so under overcast Edinburgh skies. The catastrophe of Liz Truss’s premiership had catapulted Labour to poll leads they hadn’t enjoyed since Tony Blair’s first term in office, elevating Scottish Labour above the Scottish Conservatives to become Scotland’s strongest unionist party.
The Prime Minister’s jibe about Sir Keir Starmer not being able to define what a woman is at Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions should have surprised nobody. After all, he launched the same attack on Sir Keir at PMQs two weeks ago and has made similar comments multiple times over the past year.
A crisis of legitimacy looms over the British political landscape. Confidence in our governing institutions is under severe stress. Living standards have eroded rapidly following the Great Recession as the cost of living increased. The sense continues to grow that no matter what we do or who we vote for, these trends will continue, and life will worsen.
SNP politicians know they are in a hole but most of them believe they can climb out of it in the wake of the SNP’s annus horribilis, from the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon and the bitterness of the ensuing leadership contest to the party’s hammering in Rutherglen and Hamilton West
A year ago, I argued that if the SNP wanted independence to become a realistic prospect in the coming years, 2023 would have to be the year that the broader independence movement remobilised. The opposite happened.
