Recently, I chanced to be, once again, in the great and noble city of Dundee, drawn primarily by a sporting engagement at Tannadice.
If you are of a certain age, it is said that you can remember where you were when you learned that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. (Me, I believe I was boarding a bus in Dundee’s City Square. A number 22, I think.)
The First Minister called for “an end to austerity” in the public finances. Definitely delivered.
As of this weekend, the pre-Budget shadow boxing continues. Between the front benches at Westminster. And between the UK and Scottish governments.
Perhaps it escaped your notice but this week Westminster embarked upon a project which was billed as “the largest constitutional reform to the UK Parliament in a quarter of a century.”
The cause of independence has lost one of its most effective advocates. And Scotland has lost a hugely significant figure in our body politic.
Keir Starmer’s declining ratings in the polls presents a particular problem for the Labour Party in Scotland
Our planet progresses, if at all, through decency and dignity. We advance, if at all, through trade, shared knowledge and co-operation. International collaboration requires mutual political understanding. Give and take. Diplomacy, in short. Right now, our world’s political and diplomatic structures are palpably falling short. Parts of the planet experience persistent poverty. Our economies have yet to recover post pandemic. We talk endlessly of climate change but the solutions seem stuck, difficult to implement. And we are unwilling witnesses to brutal conflict. In Ukraine. And in the Middle East – where every diplomatic endeavour is thwarted. Little wonder that, when the topic of Israel, Gaza and Lebanon was discussed by the BBC Question Time panel in Dundee on Thursday, there was a discernible atmosphere of dismay, of hopelessness.
Column 173 28 September 2024 Headline: Could the new Scottish Tory leader cut a budget deal with John Swinney? Two quick questions on this quarter-centenary for the Scottish Parliament. What will Russell Findlay stand for as the new Scottish Conservative leader? And does anybody care? Yes, he is the heir to centuries of tradition. Yes, his party is still the only outfit, since universal suffrage, to win a popular majority in Scotland. (In 1955, thanks for asking.) But they have a rather variegated past. Some historians trace Scottish Tory roots back to the Jacobites. Others reflect that they gamely survived the nineteenth century, despite being routinely gubbed by the Liberals – in the “distant and Whiggish country” of Scotland.
It was, I presume, intended to be a Bad Cop / Good Cop routine. Shona Robison, as Finance Secretary, was detailed to alarm us with talk of spending cuts.
