Iain Macwhirter
Archive for
Labour would be mad to dump Kezia Dugdale. But accidents can happen…
It is not unknown for leadership speculation to break out during an election campaign that is going badly, but it’s pretty unusual for it to start before the manifesto is launched. Even Michael Foot was allowed to get his “longest suicide note in history” out before the knives went flying. The Scottish Labour Party’s Holyrood … Continue reading
Brexiteers revealing their true colours and it isn’t pretty.
PRESIDENT Obama’s intervention in the UK referendum in favour of Remain was audacious and controversial, just like his, admittedly more oblique, intervention in the Scottish independence referendum two years ago. The reaction of Dominic Raab MP was revealing about the Brexit campaign’s preoccupations. He said that President Obama wouldn’t dream of opening the US border … Continue reading
Trouble with landslides is you can be buried by them. #BothVotesWhatever
I’m sure it is just my macabre sense of humour, but I couldn’t help finding the headline policy in the SNP manifesto about a baby box for every child slightly disturbing. The newspaper images of babies lying in the SNP ‘s box didn’t help. We’ve heard of cradle to grave, but this was carrying social … Continue reading
Tactical voting on the list. It’s not just about the SNP.
The mild-mannered Professor James Curtice has thrown a psephological hand-grenade into a debate that has been raging in the independence movement since the general election over what insiders call “tactical voting on the list”. As we report today, his analysis of the opinion polls since the election confirms that – crudely speaking – a second … Continue reading
Jeremy Corbyn describes the European Union as he would like it to be, not as it is.
IT’S hardly surprising that 50% of Labour voters, according to one survey, don’t know the Labour Party’s position on the EU referendum. Most of the Labour leadership are at best reluctant Europeans. Jeremy Corbyn is a left winger who was vehemently anti-European in the past on the grounds that the EU is a capitalist club. He … Continue reading
Could Scotland become a tax haven?
The most extraordinary casualty of the Panama Papers leak so far must be Iceland’s prime minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, who has resigned following revelations about undeclared offshore bank investments in his wife’s name. You’d have thought he would have been more careful. Iceland is one of the few countries in the world to have prosecuted bankers … Continue reading
UK is up to its oxters in tax havens scandal.
The Mossack Fonseca leak may not tell us much we didn’t already know about how the rich use tax havens to hide their wealth. But the sheer scale of the leaks, weeks before the anti-corruption summit in London, has turned tax havens into a global issue. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has responded by boiler … Continue reading
If they could bail out the banks, they can bail out the steel industry.
The Tory Business Minister, Anna Soubry, became famous during the referendum for her encounter with Alex Salmond on the Andrew Marr show. She backed away from him on the couch saying she was “terrified”, as if the First Minister were an axe murderer. Now she may merit rather more than a footnote in British political … Continue reading
Iain Macwhirter 