Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to delete her WhatsApp messages during the Covid crisis, despite having promised not to, has been the central story of the Inquiry this week. There are plenty of pertinent questions around that which remain hanging. But while the personal fate of Nicola Sturgeon has occupied most of our attention, it should not blind us to some of the wider themes and … [Read more...] about Britain’s governance problem laid bare by Covid
Industrial strategy for Scotland 2
Most of the publicity around Humza Yousaf’s new year speech at Glasgow University focussed on his claim that independence could deliver a £10,000 windfall to households in Scotland. The First Minister’s Panglossian assumptions around that have been well covered elsewhere. For the purposes of this blog, we will focus on the central argument in the First Minister’s speech: the … [Read more...] about Industrial strategy for Scotland 2
The desire for change
The case for the Monarchy and the case for Scottish independence are in a similarly strange position: not dying but not thriving either. This weekend, normal service briefly came to a stop. Depending on your point of view, the Coronation of King Charles III was either a historic moment of national unity, an absurd example of post-imperialist pomp, or a faraway incident of … [Read more...] about The desire for change
Scotland deserves better than two bad choices
Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Hunt spoke within an hour of each other earlier on October 17: the First Minister to set out her economic prospectus on independence, the Chancellor to stem panic in the markets over the government’s catastrophic and now deceased mini-budget. The coincidence of the two statements helpfully sets out the two frames through which the independence debate … [Read more...] about Scotland deserves better than two bad choices