Sunday National, 18th July 2021. Counterfactual politics can be a fun game to play. What would British politics look like now, if Nick Clegg hadn’t decided to take a long walk with David Cameron in the rose garden and embrace a civil partnership with the Tories in 2010? Would the political damage still have been … Continue reading Paramount Lord of the Bouncy Castle →

Sunday National, 11th July 2021. You might know Lau’s song “Ghosts”: “We say we're not like themA generation agoWe came on the same ships we were hidden below.” The lyric came to mind this week, as our pitiless Home Secretary lodged her new Nationality and Borders Bill in the House of Commons. The Bill introduces … Continue reading Jailing Winton’s ghost →

Sunday National, 4th July 2021. “Mr Tickle, governments do not go into court against each other, do they?” That was Tavish Scott, back in September 2015, scrutinising me unsympathetically across the committee room table in Holyrood. I’d suggested that ambiguities in the Scotland Bill – which was then slowly progressing through Westminster – had the … Continue reading “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” →

Sunday National, 27th June 2021. On the morning of the 28th of April 2016, in Troon, Ian Gordon killed his wife Patricia. The couple had been married for 43 years. Ian was self-employed painter and decorator. He stopped working to look after Patricia in 2015. She suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Her health was … Continue reading Assisted dying: if not now, then when? →

Sunday National, 20th June 2021. Demanding six impossible things before breakfast is standard operating procedure for our politicians – but this week, the sense of confusion has been particularly intense. QCs Dorothy Bain and Ruth Charteris have been nominated to serve as the new Lord Advocate and Solicitor General for Scotland. They will be responsible … Continue reading There is political confusion over Lord Advocate’s role →

Sunday National, 13th June 2021. When a DUP politician says “from my cold dead hands,” you don’t expect them to be brandishing a fistful of sausages. But there he stood, cro-magnon, recreational naturist and Member of Parliament for East Antrim, Sammy Wilson, under a poster bearing the legend “Ulster is British.” Sammy doesn’t want to … Continue reading Sausage Wars →

Sunday National, 6th June 2021. Today is a blue letter day. While you are rolling out your copy of Seven Days on the kitchen table, I will be rolling up my sleeves at the NHS Louisa Jordan in central Glasgow for a swift Pfizer or sweet shot of Moderna. The internet tells me I’m on … Continue reading Covid’s intergenerational injustices →

Sunday National, 6th May 2021. It was a week of powerful contrasts. The pictures and footage emerging from Kenmure Street in Glasgow on Thursday are some of the most extraordinary I have seen in modern Scottish politics. Denounced immediately by the Home Office as “a mob,” what fair-minded observers will have seen in the south … Continue reading Forget Kenmure Street: Welcome to Gormenghast →

The Times, 14th May 2021. You often hear that complainers in sexual offence cases have “an automatic right to lifelong anonymity in the UK”. But this isn’t true. Not legally. Not in Scotland. Here, complainers have no right to anonymity at all. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is a crime to identify complainants … Continue reading Complainers in sex offence cases need full legal protection →

Sunday National, 2nd May 2021. I’ve been saying it since the summer of 2016: Brexit drives a coach and horses through the prospectus for independence put to the Scottish people in 2014. The 2014 campaign was premised on the idea that both Scotland and the rest of the UK would remain in the European Union. … Continue reading Independence, after the coach and horses →